


It's dark now, and I'm very tired

by wearethewitches



Series: the time traveller's wife [1]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alien Character(s), Alien Cultural Differences, Alien Culture, Angst, Autism Spectrum, Book 60: Lungbarrow, Celesia, Children, Cousins, Crisis of Faith, Dysfunctional Family, Episode AU: s06e08 Let's Kill Hitler, Existential Crisis, F/F, F/M, Family, Family Drama, Family Issues, Fix-It, Gallifrey, Gen, House Lungbarrow, I should probably mention here that the main character is, Interspecies Relationship(s), Meet the Family, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Off-screen Relationship(s), Parent-Child Relationship, Past Relationship(s), Platonic Relationships, Regeneration, Siblings, Time Lord Clara Oswin Oswald, Time Lords and Ladies, Time Shenanigans, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, the Doctor's cousin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-16 12:10:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11828481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearethewitches/pseuds/wearethewitches
Summary: I love you, always. Time is nothing. - the Time Travellers Wife,When a cousin of the Doctor who survived the Burrowing of House Lungbarrow steals a life for herself in the middle of the Time War, monsters created in the bowels of Gallifrey's TARDIS laboratories, that escaped with little more than their lives, crawl out of the Vortex and attempt to change the flow of time.Because, as they know intimately, time can be unwritten too - and Celesia just might be their key to opening that door.//or, I want to FIX THINGS and investigate Time Lord culture. Also, let the Doctor and River Song be together, dammit!





	1. episode one: foundations (part one)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sonictrowel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonictrowel/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The New Rule One](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9781919) by [sonictrowel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonictrowel/pseuds/sonictrowel). 
  * Inspired by [Epilogue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11867247) by [sonictrowel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonictrowel/pseuds/sonictrowel). 



“Mother?”

Celesia looks up from her twentieth-century novel, searching for her son in the grass. She finds him near the edge of the meadow, beneath the boughs of a great oak that has long since become a forest tree, rather than a garden tree. Briefly, Celesia recalls planting it during her original surveying of the grounds of her home before focusing in on Tristan. In his hand is a yellow fidget cube and today, it seems that Tristan prefers to keep his hair out of its usual ponytail.

“Yes, child?”

“I would like to know about my secondary progenitor.”

Celesia frowns, watching Tristan as he walks over to her, sitting down on the step by her feet. Blonde hair hides his eyes from her, but they’re downcast anyway – faux-interested in the fidget cube as he waits for her answer. Celesia decides for that reason to speak. Tristan is an honest person by nature. Pretending is not his forte, yet still, now, she can see him try to fake disinterest.

“Your secondary progenitor and I met in Bristol,” she closes her novel, placing it delicately on her lap as his gaze rises to meet hers, locking Celesia in place. “Our acquaintance lasted four days, in which time you had the potential to be conceived multiple times. We were unfortunate enough to be interrupted on the fourth day by his friend, who was overly horrified by what she witnessed. We parted shortly and I never saw him again. You were born eleven months and six days later.”

“The Human gestation period is nine months,” Tristan says. Celesia grimaces.

“I cannot clear matters for you, unfortunately. Gallifreyans lost the ability to procreate naturally with each other thousands of years ago and as such, the records regarding the topic were seldom viewed. Reproduction in ancient times was never one of my interests while I studied at the Academy.”

“Mother, will I study at the Academy?”

A deep ache makes itself known in Celesia’s chest as she shakes her head, mute. Tristan awaits further explanation, however, patient and expectant. Adjusting her skirt, Celesia mentally reviews her Plan, noting that informing her son that the subject of the Time War and Gallifrey’s disappearance exists is scheduled for the following month. Her eyes stray to the garden shed, the TT Capsule barely able to be seen because of how strong the perception filter around it is – though, Celesia can always see it. _The benefits of bonding to a TARDIS,_ she thinks, before Tristan takes her wrist gently, attracting her attention.

“Mother, am I not allowed to know?”

“Apologies, moonbeam,” Celesia murmurs before leaning over, hand reaching to tuck a golden curl behind his ear, one of the few gestures Tristan has never, ever complained about. “My hybrid boy. So very intelligent. Further explanation as of this moment will not be forthcoming. If you would like to know anything more about your secondary progenitor, such answers are available, to a point.”

“What does he look like?”

Celesia rests her hand on Tristan’s where he holds her other wrist. “He has your blonde hair, though it is far shorter, around an inch and a half long. His iris’ are grey-blue and his nose larger than average. His bone structure is visible and curt – you have his chin and brow, as well as his ears. He is approximately one point eight meters tall, or five foot and nine inches. I do not know his weight, though he was certainly healthier than most Humans. This would most likely be because of his career path.”

“What is his career?”

“I was under the impression he was training to be a nurse,” Celesia replies, before a car horn blares on the other side of the house. Tristan’s hand slips from her grasp as he slaps his hands over his ears, fidget cube falling. Celesia catches it before it can break on the steps and tucks it into his trouser pocket, knuckles grazing over the soft wool of his jumper. “Retreat inside if you become too overstimulated.”

Once Tristan nods at her words, stiff and squeezing his eyes shut, Celesia speed-walks around their home, going through the gate and immediately glaring at the bright red car in her driveway. The driver plasters on a grin at the sight of her, calling out in English.

“Professor! Was wondering if you were home!”

“I am and you have disturbed both I and my son,” Celesia speaks in the same tongue, coming to stand by the door of the car, arms crossing. She ignores how Joseph’s eyes linger on her collar. _He is a necessity_ , she reminds herself. “I’ve told you before not to arrive unexpectedly.”

“I was passing through,” he excuses himself flippantly, slumping in his seat. “I’ve got some gossip you might want to hear, though.”

“It had better be good,” Celesia glares and Joseph shrugs.

“Melody Zucker went missing a couple of days ago. You said to keep tabs on her and I did – she stole my car because of it,” the Human scowls, running a possessive hand over the steering wheel. “But anyway, she left it in a field, disappeared and hasn’t been seen since.”

“There’s no trace of her?” Celesia gripes, inwardly groaning because _no, she’s a Time Lady who has no real idea what she is!_ Truly, just stumbling across one of her own kind like she had – or, how Melody had stumbled across Celesia. She was the one to interrupt Celesia and Rory mid-coitus, after all. “Some spy you are.”

“Hey! Don’t be rude, Professor,” Joseph complains. “I’m not trained for spying – I’m an accountant! You’re just lucky I’m around!”

“I can do everything you do for me,” Celesia glares again, leaning over, hands curling around the open car window. “The only reason I hire you is because the alternative is letting a Human with alien heritage drive around knowing exactly where I live and with whom, without being under my payroll.”

Joseph grumbles, looking to his phone. Celesia steps back from the car, tugging at her sleeveless blouse, tucking an edge back under her skirt as Joseph texts away.

“If she turns back up, call me. Shoo,” she orders once he finishes. Joseph doesn’t even bother rolling his eyes, just driving off. Once he’s disappeared through the gate, Celesia manually shuts and locks it, the black-painted bars squealing in defiance.

 _Where could she have gone?_ Celesia questions herself, before her phone chimes. Taking it out from her skirt’s pocket, Celesia purses her lips upon seeing it’s from Joseph.

**_Forgot to say there was smthng weird about Mels’ disappearance. I know u don’t get the Leadworth Chronicles so I know u don’t know. The field my car was found in was full of crop circles spelling out a word. Want to know what the word was?_ **

Coolly, Celesia replies with a terse _Yes._

In reply, rather than texting her, Joseph sends her a picture. Celesia can’t imagine he’s driving very safely if he’s using the appropriate faculties to send pictures to her, but she downloads it all the same, waiting for a few moments before viewing it. What she finds causes her to lose her composure and she jerks, phone flying into her carnations.

Eyes wide, Celesia stands in her driveway, hearts beating a samba in her chest. Then she lunges for her flower-bed, scrambling for her phone and upon finding it, staring at the crop circles spelling out _DOCTOR,_ line running through it and a square blue box in the middle of the O.

“Theta,” she whispers, before Tristan’s voice calls out from his window, lilting Gallifreyan unaffected by her TT Capsule’s translation circuits.

“Mother, why are you behaving erratically?”

Celesia looks over and up at him, barely processing the fact that he’s wearing his soundblocking headphones before putting her phone away, signing to him.

‘ _I was taken by surprise. My cousin is nearby._ ’

Tristan’s eyes widen. “Family?”

Celesia swallows the sudden lump in her throat. ‘ _Yes. Pack your rucksack and meet me in the garden. We’re going on an adventure._ ’

The next half hour passes by in a blur as Celesia and Tristan pack emergency supplies, retreating into the TT Capsule as Celesia requests the perception field lift enough for Tristan to get his first good look at it. Her TARDIS is glad to see her, humming happily as Celesia unlocks the doors by instigating a telepathic conference, recalibrates the engines and does pre-flight checks, teaching Tristan proper protocol for working a Type Seventy.

“My cousin has a Type Forty TT Capsule, so to correctly compare our respective vehicles, you must think of a twenty-first century jet and then of a twentieth-century Spitfire,” Celesia instructs her son, wishing he were older briefly. _I’ll teach him how to fly my TARDIS when he turns one hundred. He is seventy – he will not begrudge me thirty years, as he is still a child. He will see the logic in it._

“Where and when are we going?” Tristan questions.

“Listen and learn,” Celesia replies, before speaking to her TARDIS aloud, smirking ever so slightly. _Theta’s TARDIS won’t have voice-control navigational capabilities._ “Navigational directions: we’re following the time trail of the Type Forty that materialised and then dematerialised at the following location.” Celesia begins to pilot her TT Capsule then, the sensor array lighting up and Circular Gallifreyan appearing on the wide screen that curves around the lavender time rotor, explaining the following flight-path. Inputting the coordinates of the crop field, Celesia flips the engine lever, directing Tristan to turn off the brakes.

The flight that follows is smooth and peaceful. Celesia feels a rush of adrenaline nonetheless. _I should have never left you to stagnate in a garden,_ she thinks to her TARDIS. Tristan seems to enjoy the small jobs she gives him, however Celesia orders him away into a belted seat as something changes about the trail her cousin leaves behind him in his Type Forty. Celesia’s TARDIS jolts once, which is all she lets it do before her muscle-memory kicks in. Celesia is used to the Type Ninety War TARDIS, working as a tertiary pilot with a secondary, the primary melded and stuck in the epicentre of the Ninety’s engines – but the technology isn’t much different in a Seventy to a Ninety and she even has a mental bond with her TT Capsule.

They land in moments, silent and invisible, the chameleon circuit activating and the screen showing a clear view of a large, dusty room where…

“Mother, is that Adolf Hitler?”

“I believe it is, Tristan,” Celesia stares in horror at the feed because- because this is _interference!_ Oh, she heard the rumours, hundreds of years ago before the Time War even _began_ , but to see it in the flesh – _clearly_ after some sort of firefight – her cousin blatantly getting _involved in historical events_ and- and-

“Mother, that man is putting Adolf Hitler in a cupboard.”

“ _Rassilon and Omega-_ ”

Celesia stops herself from going any further in that line of speech, pressing her fingers to her chin as she tries to think properly. Tristan comes over, reaching to take her wrist.

“What happens now?”

Celesia looks to the feed – Hitler disappearing into the cupboard. Another Nazi is being seen to, her TARDIS identifying them as a Teselecta. Celesia has no idea what a Teselecta is, but seeing as the Nazi faints, she figures that now is the time to rail into her cousin. The scanner then beeps to show that the other two are completely Human, with artron energy readouts – meaning, they’re time travellers. _Theta did always like his little companions on his travels_. Breathing in deeply, the Time Lady looks to Tristan.

“Stay inside the TARDIS.”

Tristan wrinkles his nose, displaying his annoyance at the order but staying silent as Celesia smooths down her blouse, removing his hand from her wrist. Going to the doors, she takes a few moments before going outside, telepathically locking the doors behind her. Immediately, Melody Zucker pinpoints her, expression twisting into one of disquiet. Celesia meets her eyes before looking to where she’s holding her side, pursing her lips before the other woman in the room calls.

“Hey, where did you come from?”

Celesia looks over, not recognising her. _Scottish accent_ , she identifies, the ginger hair supporting her guess. She categorises the other men, her cousin a wide-eyed, bow-tie wearing giraffe of a Time Lord and the other… _well, this is certainly unexpected._ Rory Williams blinks at the sight of her.

“I know you.”

“You would,” Melody gasps with a slight laugh, “She’s the only other person you’ve ever had sex with.”

“Oh my god-” Rory starts, before Melody collapses.

“Mels!” the redhead rushes forwards, followed by her friends. Celesia gets to her first, however, half kneeling and supporting her upper body as she shudders in pain. Celesia can feel the warmth of her skin, regeneration energy unbundling from inside her. _Barely a minute, she can’t control it._ “Mels!”

Theta joins Celesia on the floor, “Rory!”

“No, no, no, no,” Rory arrives last, going to her wound and checking it over. _Nurse_ , Celesia remembers. “I’ve got to stop the bleeding.”

“How bad is it?” the other woman questions. “Rory, what can we do?”

“Just keep her conscious. Stay with us, Mels.”

“Miss Zucker,” Celesia gains her attention, “Can you tell me why you stole Joseph’s car?”

Melody heaves, grinning, “Which car? He’s got loads.”

“The red one that you drove into the cornfield,” Celesia specifies.

“He’s being paid to watch me, isn’t he? Didn’t realise it was you, but it has to be. JJ doesn’t tell just anyone his real name.” Melody replies, before letting out a sharp, pained gasp. To Celesia’s surprise, her regeneration energy tamps down and Celesia begins to feel something ugly inside her. _She can’t be much older than Tristan, one hundred and fifty maximum. How has she regenerated already?_

Theta takes Celesia’s silence as a chance to prove his worth. “Hold on, hey – look at me.” Melody does so, still smiling through her pain.

“I used to dream about you. All those stories Amy used to tell me.”

Theta grins a little frantically, smiling worriedly as he encourages her on. “What stories? Tell me what stories. Vampires in Venice. That's a belter.”

“When I was little, I was going to marry you.”

“Good idea, let's get married. You stay alive and I'll marry you, deal? Deal?”

“Shouldn't you ask my parents permission?”

Theta nods, clearly not meaning to follow through, to Celesia’s not-unexpected distaste. _Time Lords don’t forget things like that, idiot – she’s not some Human._

“As soon as you're well, I'll get on the phone.”

Then Melody surprises Celesia. “Might as well do it now, since they're both right here.” There’s a long moment of silence, Theta, Rory and their female companion sharing a look. Celesia frowns in confusion, aware in the back of her mind – literally, because of her parental bond with Tristan – that her son is just as confused. But something seems to click with the three, before Zucker finally lets her regeneration energy begin to seep out into the open air.

“Penny in the air. Penny drops.”

“Time to stand,” Celesia says, before hauling both herself and Melody to her feet, tugging the Time Lady away into the middle of the room by her underarms before retreating to Theta’s side, who stops Rory and the other woman from going forwards.

“What the hell's going on?” Rory questions.

“Back! Back! Back! Get back!” Theta pushes them both back, Celesia leaving him to it as they seem perfectly at ease with his ministrations.

Then Melody speaks. “Last time I did this, I ended up a toddler in the middle of New York.”

“You _what?_ ” Celesia says sharply, expression twisting into one of horror. “Rassilon’s Tomb, you’re a _Tot?_ ”

“Okay, Doctor, explain what is happening, please – and who are you?” the Scottish woman questions Theta and then Celesia, who doesn’t answer even as Theta sends her a confused look.

“Mels. Short for-”

“Melody,” Melody finishes.

“ _Yeah_. I named my daughter after her,” the woman says, still confused.

“You named your daughter…after your daughter,” Theta says slowly and that clears some things up, however it also makes Celesia even more confused – the existence of a temporal causality loop, notwithstanding.

“But-”

“It took me years to find you two. I’m so glad I did. And you see? It all worked out in the end, didn’t it? You got to raise me after all.”

“You’re Melody?” the woman questions, incredulous, before Rory – _who is apparently Melody Zucker’s father, pray tell, how can that be if Melody is a Time Lady?_ – speaks in a tone of dawning realisation.

“But if she's Melody, that means that she's also-”

Melody interrupts what Celesia assumes would have been a truly enlightening sentence. “Shut up, Dad. I'm focusing on a dress size-” then her regeneration begins and Celesia realises she’s forgotten what it’s like to die – her screams make all the hairs on her bare arms go on end, the sizzling gold streaming from her hands a terrible reminder of blood, battle and pain. Only when it’s over – and Melody is a blonde, white woman with a hyperactive attitude, barely giving anyone a chance to speak – does Celesia realise that she’s drawn blood in her palms, nails digging into her skin.

“Hello, Benjamin,” Melody drawls, wriggling her eyebrows at Theta suggestively.

“Who’s Benjamin?” Theta questions, Celesia answering in a stoic voice.

“It’s a nod to _‘The Graduate’_ , where Mrs Robinson attempts to seduce a teenage boy, which is _completely_ inappropriate,” Celesia turns on Melody. “You are a _child_ by Timelord standards. A very young child, if what you said about regenerating into a toddler is true.”

Celesia’s words seem to take some of the wind from Melody’s sails, her Mrs Robinson pose dropping. “I’m Human plus Timelord, whoever you are.”

“The Professor,” Celesia finally introduces herself, frowning. “How?”

“Conceived on the TARDIS by these two on their wedding night, presumably,” Theta mutters, attracting her attention. “The Professor?”

“Like you’re the Doctor,” Celesia purses her lips. “We are in Berlin, nineteen thirty-eight and Adolf Hitler is in a cupboard. Do you know what is very wrong about that sentence?”

“I’ll assume it’s the Hitler in the cupboard bit,” Theta says, before Celesia reaches up sharply and takes his ear, dragging him down to her level – and oh, is it degrading to be a foot shorter than her cousin, even with heels. “Ah! Ow, ow, ow!”

“Hey!” the ginger woman starts, but Celesia ignores her, hissing in untranslatable Gallifreyan to her cousin.

“We are sworn never to interfere and we are in _Berlin!_ Adolf Hitler is in a _cupboard!_ ”

“I didn’t mean to come here!” he whines, trying to tug out of her grip but only making it worse. “Melody shot the TARDIS!”

Immediately Celesia lets go of him, “She did what to your TARDIS?” Celesia twists, looking at the bright blue box, making her way over and opening the doors without so much of a key. _Shoddy security_ , she thinks as she feels the Type Forty reach out as much as she’s able to say hello, before coughing at the smog. She shuts the door loudly, stepping back.

“Who _are_ you?” the ginger woman asks.

“I already said – I’m the Professor,” Celesia says, turning back around to face the crowd of Humans and Timelords. _Human plus Timelord. I never even knew it could happen. Then again, Theta’s the only one willing to drag Humans around all of time and space._ “I’m a Time Lady from Gallifrey and the Doctor is my cousin. We were Loomed together and grew side by side in the House of Lungbarrow, under the care of Kithriarch Quences. Who are you?”

“…Amy.”

“Hello, Amy,” Celesia greets, before looking to Theta, who looks like he’s about to be sick. “Hello Theta.”

“…only one of my cousins went to the Academy,” he gasps, before walking forwards, looking far more fragile than glass or pottery. He reaches out, hands coming to her cheeks. Celesia allows him the contact, waiting and watching as he runs his long fingers up and over the tight Gallifreyan braids holding back her mass of dark hair, the light blue handkerchief tied up around her head – probably because it’s so Human an accessory – bringing a smile to his face. “ _Celesia._ ”

“It’s been a long time, cousin,” Celesia allows herself a smile before feeling a nudge from Tristan, stronger than any telepathic contact she’s felt from him in some time. “I have a son.”

Theta’s eyes light up. “You do?”

“His name is Tristan. He is half-Human and does not respond to stimuli well, however he would like to meet you.”

“Please!” Theta’s practically bouncing, but Melody takes the chance to bring a gun up.

“Sorry to interrupt the family reunion-”

“Put that down,” Celesia interrupts, voice stone and eyes just as hard. “You do not belong to any House and as a minor, I claim you for Lungbarrow.”

“What! No, no-” Theta starts to whine, before speaking in Gallifreyan again, whispering. “Our timelines are back to front. She knows my Name, before she dies, Cele.”

Celesia stares at her cousin for a long moment, before her TARDIS reaches out to her, questioning whether to unlock herself. Celesia glances over to her TT Capsule, sending a negative reply, not wanting Tristan involved in these shenanigans.

“I see. She is to be of her own House, then. Rory and Amy Williams’,” Celesia looks to them both, head tilting slightly. _Tristan’s House. But they are Human…_

“What is she on about, Doctor?” Amy questions, fraying at the edges, sticking to Rory’s side.

“An old Gallifreyan thing, nothing to worry about. Technically, I suppose Melody here applies, but future events…it’s all wibbly-wobbly,” Theta wiggles his hands about, looking to Melody – who is still aiming the gun at them, or rather, Theta. “Sorry. You were speaking, before you started being naughty.”

“Yes, well,” Melody eyes Celesia carefully for a moment, before brightening suddenly, gun falling to her side. “Oh! Hang on – just something I need to check.” She rushes over to what looks to be a library, or some form of storage room, speeding past Theta and Celesia both. There is a long moment of silence, before Theta swallows audibly and looks back to Celesia.

“How did you survive?”

“Survive? By running, Doctor,” Celesia says slightly bitterly, aware that the line of conversation is intriguing Tristan. She thinks to her TARDIS, _turn off the speakers_ and feels his annoyance. “You forget, cousin – we knew the Time War was coming. I fought in it and I made contingencies, in the case that I survived where my War TARDIS and fellow crew did not. It came to pass that the primary, quaternary, quinary and senary pilots died. I and the secondary fled.”

“What happened to them?” he questions, voice full of pain and eyes wide.

“Closaranoktorwin accompanied me to the Myridian Mountains before succumbing to death. She sent me onwards so I did not have to see it. Her regenerations had long run out and she suffered horribly from the mental backlash of the primary pilot dying alongside our Type Ninety.” Celesia keeps all of what grief she feels from both her face and from Tristan, the loss of secondary crewmember – _her_ _other_ _half_ – too much, almost, for her to bear thinking of again.

She remembers so much – remembers Closa’s youthful façade despite having lived thousands of years, her determination to keep Celesia alive, the command in her voice and just everything about her. Her eyes briefly flutter shut. _I still don’t know why she decided to call herself the Echo, in the end._ Closa had taken the entire War to choose her Name, for she did not feel as if she deserved one – _as if graduating from the Academy hadn’t been enough_.

“I ran to the lowlands of Outer Gallifrey and took shelter in what I thought to be an abandoned House.”

Theta makes a face of horror, “Are you _mad_ , Professor? An abandoned House is one of the most _dangerous_ places-”

“The Daleks know better to go near abandoned Houses,” Celesia interrupts him quietly, eyes opening once more, “and as I said, I only _thought_ it to be an abandoned House. In truth, it was the most clever TARDIS I’ve ever encountered. She’s mine now.”

“Okay, so I keep hearing the word _house_ like it means something,” Melody starts suddenly, voice full of excitement, interrupting. “I’ll be wearing a _lot_ of jodhpurs, by the way, this body is _fabulous_.”

Celesia can’t help the urge to explain, used to Tristan’s constant questions and need for concise answers. “Houses on Gallifrey, much like TARDIS’s, are grown. They are alive in every sense of the word and require a Housekeeper to stay sane. Housekeepers are mentally linked with Houses throughout their entire lifespan, through all regenerations until their final death. However, a House is also a family – House Lungbarrow, for example, is the House grown in the Mountain of Lung, yet also the family comprising of forty individual Time Lords at any one time.”

“Why forty?” Melody questions with a raised eyebrows, Celesia about to answer – despite the gun in her possession, _still_ – before Theta interrupts.

“Okay, enough questions. Celesia, is there anything you can do for my TARDIS? You majored in TARDIS Mechanics, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Celesia eyes him in amusement, “and unlike you, I actually graduated from the Academy with more than the bare minimum.” She ignores his indignation as she eyes his infamous blue box. “Would you like me to fix her chameleon circuit as well?”

“Don’t you dare,” Theta pokes her shoulder, before hugging her tightly. Celesia welcomes it, wrapping him in her arms before leaning back, speaking in their home tongue, the lyrical words flowing off her tongue like syrup.

“Theta, my favourite rebel of a cousin…”

His eyes narrow. “Celesia?”

Celesia pauses, before tugging at her connection with Tristan, simultaneously soothing his alarm and creating a new branch from his mind, peeling it back to the root and holding it out to Theta mind. Out loud, he yelps, but his mind eagerly takes the offer from her, greeting Tristan with a Gallifreyan salutation.

‘ _Mother, what have you done?’_ Tristan questions her as Theta claps his hands, jumping up and away from Celesia.

“Doctor? Why are you all happy, all of a sudden?”

“It’s a Time Lord thing, very special, can’t tell you,” Theta beams at Celesia, before Melody hums, only to make another noise of surprise, going to the mirror.

“The teeth! I have new teeth! Oh, this regenerating thing is _something_ , isn’t it? Down to business.” And then, the gun is up again. Celesia glares at it, feeling Tristan’s agitation at how it’s aimed at Theta. _Why is she targeting him?_ Melody advances forwards and Celesia is ashamed at how she freezes up, nevermind how the so-called _Oncoming Storm_ lets himself be pushed up against a desk, gun on his larynx.

“Oh, hello – I thought we were getting married.”

Melody shrugs with a smile, “I told you I’m not a wedding person.”

“Doctor, what's she doing?” Rory questions and Celesia can see him shaking as she slowly begins to come out of her stiffness. She eyes Melody carefully, telling her TARDIS to shut off the cameras – she doesn’t want Tristan seeing any more of this.

“What she's programmed to,” Theta replies, piquing Celesia’s interest briefly before she slowly moves, noting how Melody’s eyes flicker in her direction for the briefest of moments. She changes her mind halfway through balancing herself out, shifting onto one foot far more heavily than the other – a trick of perception, for Melody at least. _I’m more than ready to help disarm her._

“Where'd she get the gun?” Rory continues to question their situation.

“Hello, Benjamin,” Theta answers with not even a hint of smile. _The gun is loaded,_ Celesia thinks, _it has to be._

“You noticed,” Melody agrees before sighing. She steps back and away and Celesia becomes quite confused at the sight of a banana in her hand, before it disappears underneath her long shirt-dress. She looks over at Celesia suddenly. “You know what I want to know, though? You. You’re interesting. I’ll put off killing the Doctor if you tell me some things.”

“What things?” Celesia narrows her eyes, moving forwards. Melody raises the gun in her direction, aimed below her hearts, but not too far from them to be safe. Celesia doesn’t let it scare her, even as Theta makes distressed noises.

“Professor, be _careful_. River is _dangerous_.”

“River?” Melody questions. “Who’s River?”

“…spoilers,” he says.

“Spoilers? What’s spoilers?” Melody perks up, gun still aimed at Celesia. “Do you know?” She asks the other woman.

“No,” Celesia replies stiffly. “I do not.”

“Pity.” Then, without so much as a by your leave, she fires the revolver and the Time Lady feels a sharp pressure in her abdomen as the shot rings out, before pain _blooms_ inside of her. Celesia looks down at the bleeding wound and briefly, she considers regeneration. _Two left. One left, after today._ She can feel her regeneration energy stirring, recognising the life-threatening injury for what it is. _Ruptured pancreas, damaged stomach muscles – the bullet is still inside. Thank Rassilon I told my TARDIS not to let Tristan see._

Hands come to her shoulders, an arm curling around her. Celesia looks up at Rory Williams and frowns.

“I’m okay, thank-you.”

“Okay?” he laughs slightly hysterically. “You’ve just been shot!”

“Yes, I’m well aware, but I can’t afford to regenerate right now – I’ll hold it off until the immediate threat is dealt with. If she shoots me again while I’m changing, I’m dead for good and Tristan will be left alone, locked in my TARDIS for the rest of time.”

“Tristan? Is that your son?” he questions and Celesia gives him a small smile, wondering how he’d react to knowing it was his son too. Her eyes slide past him to the fruitbowl on Hitler’s table. _Ah._

“Yes. He’s seventy-two, but perhaps the more Human comparison would be seven.” She slips out of his grip, stumbling slightly towards Melody, who watches her curiously. “Give me your gun.”

“Why?”

“Because you have another one,” Celesia says, hand out. Melody sighs but nods, handing it over.

“I’ll indulge you,” she says in a faux-kind voice, before casually taking out the banana and attempting to fire it at Theta. When she sees that she’s holding a piece of fruit, an angry expression forms, a scowl that looks much like the one Celesia had viewed earlier from Amy. “Damn.” She sends a nasty look at Celesia, who smirks gamely in amusement before reloading the revolver and holding it up, feet slipping into an age-old pose.

“Professor, do _not_ shoot her,” Theta orders. Celesia scoffs slightly, rolling her eyes.

“She’s just regenerated. It would hurt her, not kill her – she has nearly fifteen hours before she can be killed by any normal measures, shot to the hearts and brain stem withstanding.”

“And you’ve always been a good shot,” he replies with gritted teeth. “Do not shoot her.”

Celesia purses her lips, stepping backwards slowly, out of Melody’s range, coming to a stop in front of Theta’s TARDIS. Leaning against it heavily, she grimaces at the pain ranging from her wound. Her regeneration energy is building up now, getting ready to blow but Celesia knows how to manipulate the energy well – she can remember so many, so, _so_ many other Gallifreyans who died on the battle field and then truly _died_ as the Daleks shot them half-way through the cycle.

Rory Williams comes to her side again and she spares him a mildly annoyed glance. He sees it and looks down, speaking quietly as Melody begins to interact with Theta again.

“Does the bullet come out when you regenerate?”

“It disintegrates,” Celesia says with some difficulty as she begins to multitask, holding down her own energy and blocking off her connection with Tristan. She’s never done this before with a bond in place, or at least, not with this kind of bond where she has so much more _control_. “There aren’t enough words in your language to describe regeneration energy. The constitution of a Gallifreyan is far more rugged and defensible than a Humans. The evolution of Gallifreyans, however, involved constant exposure to radiation through various types of solar flares, over the many millennia from our dual stars. Humans only have one, yes? One star?”

“Yeah, one sun, just the one,” Rory nods before Celesia feels the pull of gravity, legs more than slightly numb as she slides down the TARDIS. Rory helps her, holding her up by her elbow. “Are you sure you should be holding it off?”

“I’ve done this before, Mr Williams, be assured. Also, I do give my apologies in advance, if I have to use my regeneration as a deterrent. Melody is…an unknown to me in this situation.”

“We’ve met before,” he whispers, much quieter than before. Celesia looks away from the threat, a sure mistake, but Rory is about to say something important, she can feel it. “We didn’t know she was our Melody until recently – she was taken, when she was a baby, by the Silence. Raised by this cult to kill the Doctor. But we knew her before then. I mean, we knew her as River – River Song.”

“That explains it,” Celesia breathes, “though I do hope she is far older when the Doctor truly marries her.”

Rory’s face twists. “When he what?”

Celesia smiles at him with her teeth, “In the future, she knows his Name. His _true_ Name. On Gallifrey, there is a long-standing tradition, whereupon graduation from the Timelord Academy, the graduate in question choses their title – I am the Professor, as my cousin is the Doctor. Sharing and knowing true Names is…special. Unless you know a Timelord from childhood or went to War with them in the same TARDIS, you don’t know their true Name. I grew up with the Doctor. River Song knows his Name, Rory Williams…”

“Special,” he repeats quietly. “Like…marriage.”

“And sharing children,” Celesia nods, musing in her head, drifting slightly. “I suppose you should know mine, following my own logic.”

Rory blinks, then his eyes widen. “What?”

“His name is Tristan.”

“…your son. Your- _our,_ son?”

Celesia shivers all of a sudden, mind clearing – she hadn’t even realised it had gone fuzzy. “I can’t hold this off much longer.”

“Wait, your son is-” Rory says, louder, before Celesia forces herself to a standing position, staggering over to where Melody and Theta stand close together. Melody kisses him briefly and Celesia points at her with the gun.

“Time Tot!” she barks, Theta immediately jerking back, scandalised. Scowling, Celesia plays around with the revolver, emptying it and building up more and more walls between her and Tristan. “I don’t even know why I’m here anymore. I saw that stupid set of crop circles and what? I follow a TARDIS to nineteen forties Berlin and get _shot_.”

“Not just nineteen forties Berlin, darling,” Melody says, going over to the open window. “Oh, look at that. Berlin on the eve of war. A whole world about to tear itself apart. Now that’s my kind of town.” She looks back to them all. “Mum, Dad, don't follow me. And, yes, that is a warning.”

“No warning for me then? Or the Professor?” Theta asks.

“No need, my love. The deed is done and so are you.”

Then, Theta staggers, clutching his chest. “Doctor, what's wrong?” Amy comes to his aid, Celesia swaying slightly as she watches their interactions. _No._ She sniffs, senses rife. The room smells like dust, blood, flower and the sweet smell of regeneration particles- _no_ , she thinks again. _Regeneration energy isn’t sweet. Flowers. Sweet flowers._

“What have you done? River!” Theta yells, dropping down to his knees.

“Oh, River, River, River.” Melody tilts her chin, “More than a friend, I think.”

“What have you done?”

“It was never going to be a gun for you, Doctor. The man of peace who understands every kind of warfare, except, perhaps, the cruellest. Kiss, kiss.” She blows a kiss and then jumps out the window.

Rory demands to know what she did and Theta admits to being poisoned, to be _dying_. Celesia can feel the energy inside her like a furnace. She twists around, looking at the Type Forty, the only safe place to be right now if she wants to regenerate. _Killer on the loose, Nazi Germany._ Her thoughts turn to Tristan as she goes over, opening the door and immediately coughing at the thick clouds of smoke.

 _He doesn’t know what’s going on. Theta, don’t tell him. I should never have linked them together. No. Family. He deserved a bond._ Celesia stumbles through the smog, unable to appreciate the TARDIS as it is as she trips on a set of stairs. She drops to the ground, gripping the bannister and imagining her boy alone and trapped. _I need to regenerate. If I don’t, he’s in there until he can form a bond with the TARDIS. He won’t know how. How long will he be in there for until he does?_

Theta comes through the open door and shouts, “Extractor fans on!” They start up, a surprise to both of them. “Oh, that works.”

“It shouldn’t,” she says as he staggers towards the stairs – her. He looks at her, face freezing as she smiles at him. “Your TT Capsule is a Type Forty. Voice commands are supposed to be non-existent. She’s growing in ways you can’t imagine.”

Theta doesn’t answer her, going up the stairs and falling to the ground by the console. Celesia gives him his space as he consults a voice interface, obviously remembering mechanical tidbits about more advanced TT Capsules. _If voice-command works, an interface is viable_ , the Time Lady breathes in deep, wincing at the pain in her abdomen.

“Block Tristan off, Theta,” she says breathlessly. Theta shouts an annoyed and rude reply, but Celesia has enough presence of mind to evaluate the surface of his words, drawing consent from it, if not _obvious_ consent. Safe in the knowledge that Tristan shouldn’t be feeling their joint pain, she reaches up to her head, removing the band. She stuffs it in her pocket and then undoes the first three buttons of her blouse.

 _I really hope I go down a breast size,_ Celesia wishes, shutting her eyes and imagining her new body. _Smaller, yet taller. Lean. Different hair. Less of a soldier. More of a teacher, again, I wish. A Professor. I want to be a Professor again. Me again. Not a soldier always waiting and- and…_ Her energy burns inside of her and Celesia lets out a breath. _Goodbye Eleven._

As she thinks of her new form, she lets her regeneration energy flow though her. It aches and burns, but she grits her teeth and squeezes her eyes shut, imagining her new self. Light spills around her and she cries out, jerking up to her knees, arms out wide and pitiful. For a moment the plan for her new form disappears from her mind, before it returns with clarity.

The energy dies.

Celesia is left with a shirt too big and a skirt too short.

“Got it in one,” she breathes, voice far deeper than before and surprising. Opening her eyes, Celesia takes in the darkened skin of her bare arms and legs – similar to that of wet, dark ground from Earth perfect for growing tomatoes. She smiles, happy to be back to familiar roots. Over half her regenerations have had this kind of particular palette, though the most memorable tone had been bright, hot pink in her second body, something she’d picked up from her first tour of another planet. In another universe, she might have settled there instead, rather than Earth. However, this planet had always been a Time Lord stomping ground of sorts, mostly due to the Doctor’s favouritism.

Getting to her feet, politely coughing up some regeneration energy, Celesia notes that her cousin has disappeared with a frown. The Type Forty blinks her floor lights, turning a line of them a light orange. Celesia tracks them, after taking her heels off. The way she wobbles in them is telling – her last body took to heels better than any other by far.

Following the lights up the stairs and then another set, Celesia allows herself to be led to what eventually turns out to be a giant wardrobe, Theta already half-way through changing into a suit.

“Oh, hello,” he greets in Gallifreyan, smiling painfully. “Pretty regeneration.”

“I’m always pretty, Theta Sigma,” she returns, deep voice once more catching her off-guard. “Do you mind if I browse?”

“Go ahead.”

Nodding, Celesia looks through her cousins selection. When he uses a cane to leave the room, she watches him go, then strips to bare skin, trying on several sets of black underwear to find her right measurements. Upon doing so and finding the most suitable set – which consists of fortieth-century garments, meant for hygiene and support, the latter wrapping around her and settling wherever she sits it, stiffening into place – Celesia correctly guesses the relevant sizes for a pair of black and white patterned twenty-first century leggings and a black t-shirt. Quickly after, she finds a trench-coat that is a bright, dark red that reminds her of home. The buttons themselves are gold and when she puts the jacket on, Celesia finds herself looking in the mirror.

“Oh,” she starts, not realising how close-cut her hair was before now. Running a hand over it, Celesia wonders, before realising she has no shoes.

Five minutes later, she steps out of the Doctor’s TARDIS in bright yellow steel-toed stompers, only to realise that they’d moved. Now in an abandoned restaurant, Theta is on the ground, Amy is without Rory and Melody-

“Excuse me,” the obviously-terrified woman stops in front of Celesia, seemingly about to get inside before Celesia stepped out, “but do you know how to fly the TARDIS?”

“…why do you need to know?” Celesia replies after a long moment.

“There’s no time,” Theta gets out from his place on the floor. “Amy and Rory are in a Teselecta, about to die.” Celesia looks to where Amy stands, still as can be. Pursing her lips, she looks back to River.

“Come along, Miss Williams.” Melody’s eyes widen a fraction, before Celesia turns, going back inside Theta’s TARDIS, leading the woman towards the console. As Melody takes in the TARDIS, Celesia figures out some basic controls, piloting them into the Vortex and stabilising them there. “Come on up, if you can, Miss Williams.”

“Sorry,” she says, startling out of her awe and racing up to Celesia’s side. “What do we do?”

“What do _you_ do, is rather the question,” Celesia leans back against the railing, oddly at ease, leaving Melody to stare at her. “A TARDIS has traditionally always had six pilots, though in extreme circumstances can be piloted by one. Right now, we’re drifting in the Time Vortex. Forget everything you know about time, to understand that. I know we’re in a tough situation here, though perhaps this TT Capsule has gone through enough evolution to help us here.”

The TARDIS at that makes a noise relating her understanding, golden dust reminiscent of regeneration energy rising from the console. Melody’s eyes glaze over and Celesia puts a hand on the railing, holding on tightly as she consults her parental bond with Tristan. The blocks are still in place, thankfully. She begins to lower the outer layers of the wall, peeling them away slowly. Her eyes drift open as she gets into a rhythm and she saunters over to where Melody is calmly piloting the TARDIS, drifting around the console.

“You’re doing well,” she says in Gallifreyan, Melody pausing to glance at her. “Do you understand me?”

“Somehow. I don’t know. It doesn’t sound like…like anything I’ve ever heard before.”

“It wouldn’t,” Celesia says, flipping a switch as Melody’s hesitance catches up with her. “Don’t get distracted.”

“Right.”

A few hours pass and in that time, Celesia makes herself an Earl Grey, the tannins revitalising her brain. _I was on the verge. This is what blocking off telepathic nodes does to a Time Lord._ Soon, there is only a very thin layer between Celesia and Tristan, which she leaves as his presence becomes clearer to her – she can feel him, yet is unable to understand anything other than _he is there._ Distantly, she wonders if her House Bond with Theta is gone and goes rooting around in her brain for it, unable to find much. _Everything is muted, probably because of my leaving the Time War. As soon as I went back the way I left, I’d feel everyone. Theta as well. History protects itself. I’m living on stolen time._

Celesia knows her death is fixed – that she dies on Gallifrey. She’s known ever since she looked into the Vortex and saw her thirteenth, final self executed in front of the High Council. _One regeneration left. Theta will look after Tristan, if I cannot. My own TARDIS will, if neither of us can._

“I think I’m done,” Melody speaks to her in Gallifreyan after returning to the Vortex. Her third precision landing in as many hours has just passed and Celesia nods, ready to help her input the correct space-time coordinates if she needs, plus the special modifications to hop inside the Teselecta – clearly some kind of death-trap robot. “May I ask you some questions?”

“Ask your questions, I won’t laugh,” the Time Lady replies with another nod.

“Before…before you and I left Berlin, the Doctor convinced me to do this and…he said I’m the child of the TARDIS. Do you know what he might have meant?” Melody looks up at the time rotor as Celesia weighs her words, coming up with a response surprisingly easily.

“If your parents conceived you anywhere else in the universe, you would not be a _Human plus Timelord_ , as you so put it. In truth, ‘Human plus Gallifreyan’ would be far more apt. You have not graduated from the Academy, so you are no Time Lady, not like I. You never can be, either. The Doctor and I were lucky to be invited into the fold – our names were pulled out of a bowl. House Lungbarrow might be old by Human standards and belong to one of the oldest Chapters – but really, it is so very, very new. I heard that one of our subsidiary House’s had a child accepted into the Academy, but only after gaining her…scholarship, you might say.” Celesia can’t remember her name, but she thinks they were from House Heartshaven. Shaking her head, she looks over at where Melody stands, listening. She sips her tea and thinks some more before continuing.

“This TARDIS gave some of herself when you were conceived. It is the only possible hypothesis. She cradled Amy in her energy and is therefore as much your mother as the Human is. It is an honour and says very well of your parents. This TARDIS loves her passengers, loves them so much that to show it…you. Simply, you.”

Melody is silent for a period of time, before she repeats her earlier words. “I think I’m done.”

“Then, land inside the Teselecta,” Celesia replies simply, cradling the last of her tea. The cup is still warm when she finishes it, Amy and Rory both, clutching each other, appearing near the door. Celesia watches Melody put on a confident face that crumples as her mother speaks.

“Doctor? Doctor, you did it. He did it!” The two Humans look over, smiles falling when they see Celesia and then Melody, who looks at them, lost.

“I can fly her. She showed me how. She taught me…the Doctor said I’m the child of the TARDIS. That makes her…part of me. I wouldn’t be me without her.” Melody looks to Celesia, who nods in agreement before Amy demands to know where Theta is. Celesia does not help Melody pilot the TT Capsule outside, back into the abandoned restaurant where her cousin lies, dying.

He speaks to Amy and Rory, calling them _the Ponds._ Then, he speaks to Melody and Celesia can feel a pivot, a crossroads in the time stream. It’s like approaching a waterfall – you can hear it coming and the noise just keeps getting louder and louder, but you don’t know how far you’re going to fall until you reach the drop itself.

Theta loses consciousness and his hearts stop beating.

“Who’s River Song?”

When Melody begins to glow, Celesia bemoans _idiot Time Tots_.

“Oh no you do not, young lady.”

“What else am I supposed to do? It’s my fault he’s like this-”

Celesia kneels by their sides, taking her hands which sting and burn. “You do not know how to control this. I know you want to help and you can, but on my honour as a member of the Prydonian Chapter, I shall not let your recklessness be your end. Let me help.”

“I’m hurting you,” Melody says, before Celesia guides the girls hands to Theta’s face – as close to his hearts that she can get via skin-to-skin contact, seeing as Theta’s wrapped himself up like it’s minus fifteen in the middle of the night. He shocks awake at the contact and Celesia begins to guide Melody’s energy through him with her own, reigniting his system.

“Number thirteen,” she says in surprise. _Oh._ His eyes flicker to hers, a gimlet of betrayal and annoyance festering there. In her mind, Celesia cements herself to the concept of saving him here, even when he shall not ever have the time to take Tristan, should her fixed death come to pass. “Cousin, do you really think I’m going to let you die? You are far from the last of us, but still – and did you not think that Melody Williams’ grief would make her do this anyway, without me?”

“How many faces do you have left?” he questions her. Celesia gives a wide smile.

“Two, dear cousin. This one and yet another. Do not worry for me. Worry for this Time Tot you promised to marry. She will fit right into the Chapter and Lungbarrow will be honoured by her.”

Theta lets out a short laugh before Melody leans over his body, their foreheads connecting. “I can feel it. My regeneration energy,” she says.

“Mine now,” Theta grumbles happily. Celesia feels his body fully rejuvenate – the poison burning out under the combined forces of three different Time Lord’s. She tugs, pulling them both away, severing the link. Physically, she pulls Melody away from him, letting the light fade away from them all. Inside both herself and Melody, she can feel their regenerations settling.

“We’re finished cooking, Tot,” Celesia jokes, the assassin glancing at her before Theta sits up, Melody taking no time at all in pulling him in by his lapels for a kiss. Deciding that perhaps she should account for Human growth rates, Celesia lets it be, getting to her feet and glancing over at Rory and Amy. The former looks at her with an odd focus and after a moments thought, Celesia remembers telling him about Tristan.

_Note to self: don’t open your mouth for anything but breathing next time._

“I believe we should reconvene in Leadworth. I’m uncomfortable leaving a TARDIS in Hitler’s office,” Celesia says, after Melody and Theta stop swapping spit. They get to their feet, Theta nodding.

“Yes, yes, good idea – and I can meet Cousin Tristan in person!” he beams, twirling his cane before spinning around, locating a top-hat. “Into the TARDIS, Ponds, Professor!”

Leaving the trashed restaurant, they all return to the TARDIS. Theta grins at Melody when she joins him at the console, looking to Celesia expectantly.

“Come on, I haven’t had proper co-pilots since the twenty-seven planets debacle!”

“The twenty-seven planets in the sky?” Celesia raises an eyebrow. “Do you happen to know why we were in a different part of space at the time?”

“We were inside the Medusa Cascade, one second out of sync with the universe,” Theta grins smugly, not answering her question in the slightest. “Now come fly her!”

“We’re already there, Doctor,” Celesia replies, to his immediate frown. Shaking his head, he tries to deny it.

“No, we’re not-”

“Yes, we are,” Melody interrupts.

“No- no, you put the _stabilisers on!_ ” Theta starts to moan, Celesia taking the chance to leave, Tristan practically tearing down the last remaining walls between them. Exiting the blue box, Celesia goes over to where her TARDIS is stationed, unlocking the doors and slipping inside. Immediately, Tristan bombards her, arms wrapping around her waist.

“You’ve regenerated!”

“I have,” she puts a hand on his head, curling a lock behind his ear. He lets go shortly and Celesia goes up to the console, typing rapidly. The desktop pings once the connection is made, a portion of the screen turning into a feed looking into Theta’s TARDIS from various angles. “Doctor,” she calls, watching her cousin and his two companions look around, moving to crowd around the closest screen. “Doctor.” The multi-view turns to that single one, a much larger image than before.

“ _Professor! Didn’t even realise you’d gone! Off to Leadworth, then?_ ”

“I’m sending you the coordinates of my estate, just outside of it. Try not to land on my flower-bed, please,” Celesia dictates, nudging her TT Capsule into messaging them the exact coordinates of her driveway – the exact middle, so that if he was anything less than six feet off in any direction, he wouldn’t land on her flowers.

“ _Received and waiting! We’ll see you and Tristan there?_ ”

“Yes,” Tristan says, coming into view. Theta’s face gets closer to the screen, Amy and Rory – Rory so much more obviously – trying to see past him. A grin lights up Theta’s face.

“ _Hello, there, cousin. How old are you, then?_ ”

“ _Seventy-two,_ ” Rory replies for them. “ _Or seven. That’s what the Professor said earlier, at least._ ”

“Seven would be the appropriate equivalent,” Celesia confirms. “We will meet you at my home approximately three days after your first departure from the area.”

“ _Alright! Seeya later,_ ” Theta dashes out of view and Celesia meets eyes with Rory for a few, brief, drawn-out seconds before Amy speaks with a frown.

“ _Hey, did you kidnap a young Rory or something?_ ”

Celesia has the distinct _pleasure_ of seeing Rory Williams’ face at that comment, right before she turns off the call. Ignoring her sudden unease, she begins to pilot her Type Seventy back home, Tristan sitting down on a nearby seat. She can see him watching her, expression unreadable.

“He is my secondary progenitor.”

“Indeed.”

“I have a step-mother.”

“You do.”

“I also have a half-sister.”

“Yes,” Celesia flicks a switch unnecessarily hard, her anxiety slipping through the parental bond without her consent. Tristan’s alarm at the transfer makes her all the more uncomfortable.

“You are very worried about all of this. Why did you invite them to our home?”

“Because I told your father you exist and he deserves to know you. Theta also requested to see you in person. I warn you, he can be quite energetic. Do not be afraid to tell him your boundaries.”

“…Mother, do I have to meet them all now?”

Celesia, who had brought them into the Vortex for deliberate procrastination reasons, readying the TT Capsule for trip to two thousand and twelve, pauses – which is a mistake when piloting _any_ vehicle. All of a sudden, they’re jolted to the side, as if something is crashing into them.

“Hold on!” she shouts to Tristan, who gets up and hurriedly buckles into his seat. Celesia, who’d been knocked to the floor, gets to her feet and staggers to the console, reading the screen and twirling around the crescent-shaped console, lavender light of the time rotor casting a tinged shadow throughout the triangular room as the hexagonal shapes inside go up and down with harsh sucking noises. Tristan whimpers, putting his hands over his ears, but then Celesia manages to land them, roughly.

Falling to the ground again, the Time Lady takes a moment to breathe before standing, looking at the console.

“What the hell is a _Familiar?_ ” she questions, before a knock comes from outside. Alarmed, Celesia straightens and reaches under the console for a crowbar she’d stuck under it nearly a hundred years ago. “Tristan, get further inside and let her hide you, until it’s safe to come out. Pick something that isn’t original like the Zero Room – the Zero Room is not a good place to be when you are being pursued, trust me.”

“I trust you,” Tristan says, unbuckling himself before running to the only door other than the one leading outside and the one opposing it on the third wall, shutting it behind him and leaving Celesia in silence. _Hide him, keep him safe,_ she orders her TARDIS, before checking their location.

 _5,000,000,024, the New, New York Undercity._ Celesia frowns, before another knock comes from the door. _Show visual feed,_ she orders her TARDIS, watching the screen flicker to show a hairless bipedal being that – considering the location – is most likely Human. Their dressed rather simply, in bleached overalls with a large tear on the lapel – as if they’d torn off an insignia or badge. They look up at where the visual feed is stationed, giving a blasé smile that makes Celesia’s skin crawl before their mouth moves. Celesia requests for audio.

“- _should come outside. I assure you, it is quite safe, in this time period at least. New New Earth will go through a crisis in five years time, though I doubt either of us will be there to witness it._ ”

Holding down a button, Celesia speaks calmly to them. “Who are you? How can you perceive my TT Capsule?”

“ _My cousin is young yet. I am a child, yet still so very much older than she is._ ”

“Cousin?”

The person pats the Type Seventy fondly, the outer shell – on inspection – a metal shed. The touch sends a bunch of static through the console, her TARDIS sending Celesia waves of sympathetic confusion.

“ _You’ve never heard of the Familiars before. I do not blame you. We were quite the top secret endeavour. Only ten of us, commissioned and built by House Dvora. We subsumed our creators to escape to the Vortex – it was only instinct, things we have all discarded, by now. Please do not worry.”_

“Your words only _make_ me worry,” Celesia says, unnerved. Their words reverberate through her, strange and twisting – because what they mean, what they can _only mean_ is that they are a TARDIS. A TARDIS that subsumed their creator, a member of House Dvora most likely. Celesia remembers House Dvora. All their members attended the Academy and few did not join the Guilds or the Council. _One married into House Heartshaven, both for love and for their future child. What was her name?_

“ _Romanadvoratrelunder_ ,” the living TARDIS- _Familiar_ , says with in proud tone. Celesia stiffens. “ _A shining example of the Time Lords. She becomes Lady President some few years after your fixed death. I hate that, you should know. Fixed points. So…unnatural. If Time Travel didn’t exist, then neither would fixed points. Knowing the truth makes it so, or paradoxes abound come into play. How would you know the truth in the first place if it never happened?_ ”

“What do you want?” Celesia interrupts.

“ _I would like to introduce you to a man…or rather, I would like to introduce you to…a fixed point, an unnatural event in space-time…_ ” the Familiars smile fades and Celesia feels as if their eyes were truly meeting through the feed, her gut twisting and turning in her stomach. Self-consciously, she grips the collar of her jacket, as if she could…hide herself, from this strange entity. “ _Dear Professor, have you ever heard of the Face of Boe?_ ”


	2. episode one: foundations (part two)

The Undercity, in comparison to the Overcity, is a slum. The Undercity is all steel and dirt, built up over hundreds of years, while the Overcity is shining and pristine, pastures of apple grass growing silently beneath busy hyperlanes. The city itself – New New York, the fifteenth created, or so the Familiar says – is filled with skyscrapers, all built in a spiral pattern.

“Grids aren’t fashionable,” the Familiar explains shortly, in an off-hand manner. “Mathematics are seen as an art-form, however.”

“The Fibonacci Spiral,” Celesia murmurs as they make their way on foot through the Overcity after having travelled by foot upwards from the Undercity. She ignores the considering looks from the natives at her way of dressing. Celesia supposes her style would be seen as ‘ancient’ or perhaps ‘antique’ – however, the Familiar looks like they could belong in the bowels of a ship from any century, with their overalls. The expressions they receive are far more derogatory than the ones Celesia plays host to, in any case. “A logarithmic spiral with a growth factor of _phi_.”

“And they use it as a design,” the Familiar stops by a hovertaxi ring, bending into a slight bow, holding out their hand to her. “Professor.”

“Excuse me if I do not want to touch an unfamiliar element,” she says dryly. “Where are we going?”

They retract their hand. “The Hospital, where the Face of Boe is currently taking up residence. Some few millennia ago, his head was cut off by the Headless Monks and the procedure used to preserve it despite his unique physiology…he remained a head, conscious and alive as all Heads do. His body, however, deteriorated, an unusual yet not unknown rarity of those converted to their Order.”

“…I’ve never heard of this… _Order_ , before,” Celesia admits begrudgingly. The Familiar smiles again.

“The Order of the Headless are a religious organisation who believe faith resides in the heart and not the head, established in the twenty-eighth century. They did not gain true prominence in the known universe until the fiftieth century, when Mother Superious, Tasha Lem, reorganises the Papal Mainframe, a power which the Headless acknowledge and follow, as many other religions eventually do. Did. Tenses are difficult when time travellers converse.” The Familiar motions to the hovertaxi. “The Hospital?”

Celesia acquiesces to the journey, the Familiar quickly going on a long ramble about the Papal Mainframe. Quickly, Celesia realises the Familiar focuses on the Mother Superious, Tasha Lem – a revolutionary, or perhaps a tyrant. As Mother Superious, she has the authority to change the core tenets and edicts of every faith and religion under her control, which she will, does, has. _Tenses are difficult_ , Celesia agrees with the Familiar on that point.

“The Silence as a species are quite an amazing invention. Even I have difficulty perceiving them during the present.”

Celesia frowns, “A species?” Only a minute beforehand, the Familiar had mentioned that Tasha Lem created the Silence – the Silence, as in an _organisation._ Not an organism.

“Yes, but you don’t need to know about them.” The Familiar hums lowly, before Celesia feels the Vortex around it, making her shudder at the abruptness. It’s like there’s a crack in time or a rip, emanating from the living TARDIS where there, before, had been absolutely _nothing_ to say the Familiar was anything more than a depowered TARDIS shell. “Outside the Hospital, another of my kind shall meet you. A sister of mine, if you will. Yes, I do believe she likes that, at the moment,” the Familiar chuckles before abruptly disappearing from inside the hovertaxi.

A single moment after the Familiar disappears, there remains tiny crackle of blue – an opening to the Vortex. Celesia looks, eyes wide, captivated by the sight of _Time itself_.

In her mind, she sees an event – a girl, waking from death in a breath of yellow and green – before it reverses and repeats backwards and forwards in her head. It happens over and over again, the events surrounding the awakening getting longer each time, but in reality only a second passes. By the time the opening closes, Celesia has seen the war that lived and died within a week and the escape of a genetic anomaly into the vastness of space.

Pressing back against her seat, Celesia blinks slowly, hearts slower than they ever should be in her chest. Her brain feels like it’s been fried by a hundred thousand volts of electricity.

“New New York Hospital, though I don’t know why you’d want to come here – new management, since the Sisters of Plenitude got done for experimenting on clones,” the driver of the hovertaxi says through the speaker, snapping Celesia out of her moment of temporal grace, hearts picking up speed again. “Want me to stay to pick you up after? Tab’ll stay running, though.”

“…stay,” Celesia says, unaware if her TARDIS had provided anything in her pockets that would help pay the credits owed. Staggering out of the hovertaxi, Celesia wonders if the Familiar meant to show her where they were heading – because that is the only thing Celesia thinks of, when asking herself _why show me my cousin’s child?_ Theories bounce back and forth in her head until she tentatively settles on one that is less disturbing to her. _The Familiar must not be aware of the opening it leaves behind, while travelling into and out of the Vortex._

“Professor Larn?” A new voice startles her and Celesia whips around to stare at the new figure. They look female, of small stature with long, curled copper hair, but Celesia knows better than to assume their gender – though, the Familiar before had just called the person that would greet her their ‘sister’. Yet, Celesia is still far more disturbed by the form of address. _They called me Larn._

No-one has called her that in centuries.

“My sibling can be lazy, I’m aware – my apologies that you were forced to look into the Vortex,” the new Familiar says, before smiling pleasantly. Immediately, Celesia can see the resemblance between them both, in two different ways – the smile being one and the similar aesthetical principles of their faces being another. However, where the first Familiar had been the type of person who you’d easily miss in a crowd with simple features and unremarkable clothing, this second Familiar…

 _They have a unique style,_ is all Celesia thinks as she takes in the vibrant, multi-coloured silk evening dress, a bright orange sash twisted over her shoulder to attach at her waist, dotted with sequins. _Very unique._

“You may address me as Ms Day,” she continues, before tapping on the hovertaxi window. It opens and she snaps her fingers. Almost immediately, the hovertaxi drives away, window closing. “You won’t need that. Follow me.”

Uneasy – and wondering what she had done to the hovertaxi driver – Celesia follows ‘Ms Day’ into the Hospital. Inside is peaceful, except for a white booth, where angry voices debate loudly over whether their client can be given a legal identity yet. Outside the booth, a middle-aged human woman with her hair tied back in a stiff braid waits, playing with a squishy ball as if she were some kind of child, bare feet twisting around the chair leg.

“Ignore that,” Ms Day says, the Familiar flourishing a hand towards the elevators. “Be aware that the decontamination is rather wet.”

“What ward?” Celesia questions as they both enter one, a yellow-skinned humanoid exiting hurriedly, briefcase clutched tightly to their chest.

“Ward Twenty-Six,” Ms Day says clearly, the following hospital elevator trip _truly_ reminding Celesia of how the year _5,000,000,024_ differs from the twenty-first century. Upon entering Ward 26, Ms Day leads her past a myriad of patients, to the end where a large face in a glass jar – the Face of Boe, most likely – is being talked to by a humanoid man with a clipboard.

“-deteriorated and to be blunt, sir, it is far more hygienic to die in a hospital than in your own home.”

“You’re dying?” Celesia questions, glancing at the monitors attached to his jar. She doesn’t know his baselines, but the low oxygen level does seem to be a worry, especially seeing as he can obviously survive on New New Earth with its oxygenated atmosphere in a Basic life-support machine.

“ _Oh…Professor, I have not seen you in some time,_ ” the Face of Boe says in a slow voice, mentally projecting.

Immediately, Celesia looks at him sharply. “Excuse me?”

The Face smiles. “ _How is Daisy these days? And Mister Thorn?_ ”

“I’m afraid we have not yet been acquainted and I have no idea who either of those people are,” Celesia tilts her chin slightly, looking to the Familiar. “Why did you bring me here?”

“You’ll see,” Ms Day takes a tablet from- from thin air? _Where did it come from?_ Celesia watches her work on the tablet, but struggles to decipher the code running across its screen fast enough. “Captain Harkness, meet the Professor – early days Professor.”

“ _I see,_ ” the Face – _Captain Harkness?_ – says, red eyes aimed solely in Celesia’s direction. “ _I would offer you some advice, Professor, if you’d be so kind as to receive it._ ”

“Someone said you’ve lived through a few millennia. I don’t suppose you’ve learnt the Laws of Time in that period?”

“ _I was once a Time Agent. I know them very well._ ” Bubbles flow up through the Face’s jar, the official who had been talking previously clearing his throat.

“You should not be having visitors!”

“Go away,” Ms Day replies to his outburst, clicking her fingers in front of his face without looking up from her tablet. The official immediately twists, hurrying away, muttering to himself about _that_ _blasted Slitheen family._ Celesia watches him leave in horror before taking a step away from Ms Day, who the Face of Boe visibly frowns at.

“ _Stop that, Dahlia._ ”

“My name is Day, as of this moment.”

The Face sighs, looking to Celesia again. “ _Apologies. She’s usually much more…subtle, about her gifts. Unfortunately, my presence disturbs her-_ ”

“Yes, it does.”

“- _and while Day has the ability to act appropriately for an individual of the time period she is in, she herself is compromised by my very existence._ ”

“I…see,” Celesia frowns, stepping closer, wondering why he disturbs her so. She puts a hand on his jar, feeling a prickling of electricity before a faded image of a young human male with a white smile and bright eyes. “Is that you?”

“ _It was. Once. You son and I know each other._ ”

“So you are Tristan’s friend,” Celesia frowns, taking away her hand, reaching out with her senses. As she reaches, she feels a heavy ring of time energy – a blockade, so that she might not feel past it. Disappointed but still faintly impressed at the technology, she retreats, speaking clearly. “You shouldn’t tell me things like that.”

“ _Tristan and I are, or rather, were friends. Your son and I, though…oh, you shall see. You shall understand eventually, Professor._ ”

“Time to go,” Ms Day then says, chipper. “My sibling has retrieved your TT Capsule, Professor.”

“Retrieved it?” Celesia stands slowly, suddenly quite wary. “What do you mean by ‘retrieved’?”

“Will retrieve, is retrieving, apologies,” Ms Day corrects herself, before Celesia feels her TARDIS in her mind, calling out briefly in panic, before the first Familiar she’d ever met appears in the empty space beside the window, her TARDIS in shed-form in its grasp. Almost immediately after the Familiar lets go, she shifts into a new form, of a white cabinet that doesn’t look too out of place in the Ward. Day grimaces. “She is upset.”

“I’m aware,” Celesia snaps, storming forwards and putting her hands on its camouflage, stroking her gently, soothing her over their bond. Her TARDIS is crying, feeling invaded and disturbed. Celesia can feel the touch of the other TARDIS – the Familiar – on her Type Seventy’s presence, like a giant claw that has dug in and tugged, not unlike the old Dalek TARDIS Snatchers. Anger grows inside of her and she turns swiftly, backhanding the Familiar across their face.

They go down, frowning slightly. “I knew that was going to happen. However, I did not expect the pain.”

“Good,” Celesia seethes, glad to learn that while they knew it was coming and had the chance to avoid it, they were able to be harmed at all. _Subsuming their creators, House Dvora – they probably barely got any time to run tests. What did this Familiar say? That they had discarded instinct by now?_ That means, in her mind, that they grow. They are true beings with true sentience.

Tristan calls out to her then, presence faint – her TARDIS informs her of the psychic shields she refuses to take down until the Familiar’s are far away from them. Celesia’s bond is stronger than what a TARDIS can block, however, so his call reaches her anyway. The general gist is _calm down, your emotions are distracting_. Celesia sighs inside at that, but shuts her eyes, focusing on clearing her head. _My TARDIS will heal. The Familiars will depart from my presence. Let it all go._

Breathing in deeply, Celesia centres herself. Then, opening her eyes and mouth, about to give the Familiars a proper talking to, the Time Lady stops to watch the Familiar once again begin to feel like a rip in time – Ms Day putting a hand on her siblings’ shoulder, both of them fading out of existence, slipping into the Vortex. The rip closes up immediately after they disappear into it, the Face of Boe letting out a mental laugh at Celesia’s visible outrage.

“ _You’ll see them again, don’t worry, Professor. I advise you get into your TARDIS and set a course for Earth, in the twenty-first century, three days after the Doctor arrives in Leadworth. After all, you never know what might befall you in the future – introduce Tristan to Rory and say hello to your cousin for me._ ”

“Thank-you for your advice,” Celesia says lowly before unlocking and entering her TARDIS, the machine welcoming her gladly. A few moments later, Tristan appears on the ship console screen. “Tristan, it’s safe.”

“ _I will be staying in the library for the forthcoming few hours, to read this book on twenty-fourth century nanotechnology evolution,_ ” he says as she approaches the console, frowning at his words.

“I’m taking us to see your father.”

“ _I don’t want to meet him yet._ ”

“You have no choice in the matter, Tristan,” Celesia informs him. “If the Familiars keep interrupting our lives, I would have liked you both to have officially met in case anything happens. I would also like you to know him in the case of…” Celesia slows to a stop, not wanting to say _my eventual demise._ It’s a fixed point. When it happens, Celesia does not want to leave her son alone in the universe, except for Theta – who is on his last regeneration in any case. Knowing his father means, subsequently, knowing his sister, who despite her age is still capable of regeneration and thus far more suitable than a Human to care for Tristan in the long-term.

“ _I don’t want to meet him yet,_ ” Tristan insists, however. “ _I want to finish my book and then read up more on the same topic._ ”

“I will compromise. Finish your book, then come to the console room, sans distractions.” Turning off the screen, last word said, Celesia thinks on what she should do for the next few hours. _TARDIS maintenance, perhaps – would you like that?_

The positive response lends Celesia the will to open the trap-door in the floor, climbing down the ladder into the primary control engines. Taking off her long coat and throwing it up back into the main console room, Celesia begins starter checks, moving onto intermediate and then advanced, making a mental list of things to do as she does.

In her mind, she tallies up what she knows of the Familiars.

_They were experiments, commissioned and built by House Dvora. TARDISes. They subsumed their creators because their instincts led them into the Vortex – does that mean they had no stable body? Or is it to do with the symbiotic nuclei in Time Lord’s, that TARDISes need to activate their engine sequences? Certainly they don’t travel the same way as normal TARDISes do – they rip a hole in the dimensions to get into the Vortex instead, like Omega did originally, opening the Infinite Schism. Ms Day said her sibling is lazy. When they disappeared together, the rip didn’t stay open._

It makes Celesia think of normal TARDIS travel – materialising in another plane of existence, the Vortex, to travel through time or sit there, drifting. The Familiars aren’t like that. _Vortex manipulators,_ she instead thinks of, humming lowly at her realisation. _They feel as if they belong in the Vortex like ordinary TARDISes, but their body isn’t made for normal TARDIS travel. Subsuming their pilot would allow them to travel at their own will with the nuclei present that allows them to time travel, but Gallifreyan Time Lords aren’t built to dematerialise naturally._

“So they punch a hole in the fabric of reality and seal it back up behind them,” Celesia smirks briefly, happy with her conclusion, before scowling as a wire sparks in her hands, her TARDIS reminding her that they still have an unknown agenda. “I know. Don’t get angry at me, my dear.” Peeking at her electricity burn, Celesia hums, paying close attention to the sensation. “I haven’t been injured at all very much over the last century. I must say, while this is more widespread than a paper-cut, a paper-cut is worse.”

After what her internal clock calls eight and a half hours has passed, the TARDIS telling her at some point that Tristan is finishing his seventh book, Celesia finishes off the basic maintenance and repair work needing done, leaving a voice recording for herself to remind her what intermediate and advanced maintenance and repair she needs to do. Then, she takes a new passageway from the under-controls to her quarters, showering and redressing in a new black t-shirt and set of leggings, oil, dirt and all manner of things providing her with reasons to chuck her current set down the laundry chute.

Celesia goes to the library on her way back to the console room. Inside, at a brightly-lit coffee table on a low, squishy seat reminiscent of an old Earth beanbag, Tristan sits with a set of glasses on his face, eyes tracing the twenty-fourth century English with avid fascination. Celesia feels only a small amount of guilt for what she’s about to do, remembering her old face and how she’d let him off doing things that weren’t to her own personal gain. _Discipline. I’m his mother – he needs to do as he’s told._

“Tristan, no reading time for the rest of the week.”

Tristan takes more than a minute to process her words, mind not easily switching from the contents of his book to her words. Once he understands what she’s said, he shuts the book and throws it across the room at her feet. Celesia picks it up, flattening the pages and closing it gently.

“If you ever do that again to any of these books, you’ll have more punishment than simply no reading time. I told you one book, then to come to the console room. The TARDIS told me every time you started a new one. I would have let you off with a reprimand after reading two, but seven? And _throwing_ your eighth?”

Tristan mutters under his breath and luckily, Celesia can’t hear him because she has only a small idea of how to deal with cheek. The stinging echo of pain on her behalf from her Type Seventy however, tells her that she would have been very, very hurt by his comment. _I’ll deal with whatever it was later._

“Put this book away,” she orders, holding it out. Tristan gets up from his squishy seat, placing his glasses in his pocket, where they disappear – swallowed up. To her surprise, as she hadn’t noticed previously, Celesia realises Tristan is wearing new clothes, ones that obviously are supplied by the TARDIS, if the dimension pockets are anything to go by. _Pockets_ , she briefly thinks, lip twitching. _Dimension pockets in pockets._

His outfit is very much the same as before – dark brown khaki trousers with numerous pockets, a blue wool jumper, a soft, round-necked shirt and Velcro trainers. However, his shirt is gold like the accents on a Gallifreyan robe and he has his hair tied back messily – some of it at least, but it’s the tied-back hair that matters. There are braids close to his skull tied back on either side over his ears, leaving the lower part of his hair loose, except for four hanging plaits, tied with and then off with red string, a bead around two.

“You’ve done them wrong,” she murmurs as he approaches, taking the book. Hands rising slowly, she waits for a visual clue to touch – receiving it after a moments thought. She undoes all but one of the hanging plaits, leaving the bead on it and brushing the other braids back into the rest of his hair. Turning him around, she inspects the messy braids against his head, undoing the knotted string holding them together, redoing it and then using the excess as the sixth of a six-strand braid.

“For every hundred years, you add a hanging braid. Beads are given at your House’s leisure. This is my bead you’re using,” she reaches around, lifting his little braid for him to see it, old and weary, etched with Old High Circular Gallifreyan. Celesia knows what it says when she reads it, but like Earth’s Latin, Old High Gallifreyan is a dead language. None speak it in her time. The bead reads _memory of kith_ , for when Theta’s mother died _. I miss her,_ she thinks. “As the only representative of House Lungbarrow, I’ll let you have it – for remembrance, let’s say.”

“Remembrance? Why?”

“The war to end all wars,” Celesia says, before curling the hanging braid behind his ear in the place of a curl. “The Great Time War, Gallifrey versus the Daleks – monstrous beings that are dedicated to the eradication of everything not Dalek. So many planets and species were destroyed in the fighting. Beings were created by both sides, in an attempt to win. The Familiars – they’re a type of experimental TARDIS that obviously got loose.”

“Obviously,” Tristan repeats in a mutter. “Did you fight in this Great Time War?”

“I did, in my last…six bodies, I believe. I was on number five when I joined the army. I joined a war crew on my ninth body. We piloted a Type Ninety War TARDIS all together – all six of us. The secondary pilot was the one to guide me to safety, to this TARDIS, disguised as a House.”

“You escaped the Time War,” Tristan gathers, frowning, holding the book to his chest tightly, tapping his foot and his ankle. “How did they not trace you?”

“I don’t know. She was so battered and alone – but this TARDIS is a Seventy, not an Eighty or a Ninety,” Celesia looks up and around at the TARDIS around them. “Maybe her lack of advancements was something they didn’t care about, at the time. I flew around a battle-field to get out. Maybe the Daleks were preoccupied.”

“I don’t like your new speech patterns. Dealing in abstract isn’t something you were like before.”

“Not out loud, no and I’m sorry that you have to deal with this – I’m still learning about myself as well. It’ll take time to adjust.”

“What will have to adjust? You or I?” Tristan clenches his hands tighter around the book. “I don’t like this. I don’t _like this._ ”

Celesia feels the urge to take him in her arms, to pick him up and put him on her hip as if he were a baby or a toddler again. Only because she knows exactly how badly her son would react to that kind of physical contact, does Celesia not follow that instinct. Instead, she puts her hands behind her back and goes back to their original conversation.

“The bead signifies remembrance because of the Time War. You exist outside of it, your personal timeline not fixed _inside_ of it, unlike my own. The bead will remind you of that.”

His eyes widen in alarm. “Your personal timeline is fixed inside a war? You’re going to go _back?_ Will you die?”

“I get executed by the Council, Tristan. My thirteenth regeneration isn’t allowed a peaceful demise. I have this body and then the next will be my last, which would have happened in any case. Because of that, I really do need to introduce you to your father, in case my life with you is shorter than either of us want.”

“He’s a Human,” Tristan argues.

“Your sister is not,” She says regretfully, before reaching slightly to tap the book. He glances at it and leaves to put it away, shoulders tense and his mind bouncing all over the place on the other end of their bond. Celesia allows him some privacy to digest the information, fully aware of how abruptly she’d given it to him. _My past face wouldn’t have done that. My past face would have waited._ “It’s too important not to tell him,” Celesia justifies out loud.

When a couple of minutes pass without Tristan’s return, Celesia beings to lean against a nearby bookshelf, waiting for him. However, when she feels him beginning to panic, calling for her through their bond with a sense of emergency, Celesia orders her TARDIS to guide her to him. Taking directions, Celesia passes through numerous aisles, going up a spiralling staircase to another level of the library. Dread suddenly curtails her mind, as she sees various Gallifreyan texts. _Why are you here, Tristan? What are you doing? What has you worried so badly?_ Celesia hopes there is nothing in this section of the library that allows him to watch battles from the Time War.

He appears before her suddenly.

“Mother, there’s someone in the library.”

Celesia immediately reaches out to her TARDIS, asking who’s there and what is going on, but getting nothing in reply – not even _confusion_ , which gives Celesia the impression that her TARDIS knows something. Uneasy, she clenches her fists. “Show me,” she says to her son, who enters an aisle, Celesia following behind him carefully.

“She’s noticeably aesthetically pleasing and knew me by name,” Tristan explains, before slowing as they get near where her TARDIS’ copy of _The History of the Great Time War_ sits on its podium. But as they come up to it, Celesia sees it is untouched – instead, the young woman sitting on the ground, right by it, is reading _The Matrix of the Time Lords._ Tristan’s fear radiates across their bond and personally, Celesia understands because their TARDIS was secure and _theirs_. Tristan had hid in the library, with the TARDIS blocking off all other exits.

To know that this woman was here perhaps the entire time is more than just terrifying.

_Can I trust my own TARDIS to keep Tristan safe?_

“Who are you?” Celesia questions as the woman looks up, smiling at the sight of them. The dark brown hair surrounding her face is braided in the Gallifreyan way and Celesia can count four hanging braids for four centuries and exactly half as many beads. From this distance, she can’t see what they say, golden paint faded in places and hidden in amongst her free tangles. She glimpses one word – _mother._ Like Tristan said, she is noticeably aesthetically pleasing, beautiful even, but not to Celesia’s tastes. _Very not to my tastes_ , Celesia frowns, feeling time around her and a sense of…knowing and unfamiliar familiarity. The phrase, _displaced in time_ , comes to mind. “How did you get into our TARDIS?”

“I’ve been here for a while,” the stranger admits freely. “I got in a couple of years ago, while she was still a shed in your backgarden. I’ve been going back and forth – I’m still studying at the Academy and they know when you’ve been away time travelling, obviously and it’s going on my record. Dad’s not pleased and while Mum wouldn’t care usually, it’s a permanent mark on my record.”

“How are you in the Academy? Why are you time travelling when you know you shouldn’t be?” Celesia questions, putting a hand on Tristan’s shoulder and telling him to go to the console room – if this intruder needed to be detained, the Zero Room was closer than the entrance to the TARDIS. He instead just moves to stand behind her, refusing to leave.

The woman shrugs a little. “Got admitted late. Sort of. It’s complicated. I’m not allowed to say more than that – it’s your personal future, after all, Aunty ‘lesia. You told me to do this.”

Celesia makes a distasteful sound, the _Aunty ‘lesia_ the least of her worries. “No. I do not agree with this. You’re breaking the rules by being here, if you’re telling the truth.”

“Oh, definitely, but as it already happened, it has to happen. You can call me Abby, by the way,” Abby glances down at her book, closing it and standing. Celesia looks away from her upon seeing she’s wearing the traditional black and red-lined uniform of an Academy initiate, New Circular Gallifrey on her shoulders and wrists in red, displaying her rank and courses. “There’s a perception filter on my clothes, don’t worry about them, Aunty. I was prepared.”

Celesia doesn’t look back at her, staring avidly at a books’ spine. “Perception filters are notoriously difficult to make work against Time Lords trained to see past them.”

“You were trained to see past them? That sounds…I learn something new about you every day, really.”

“Indeed, now please vacate my TARDIS and return to your own time.”

“I can’t do that, I- I’m sorry, but I need your help.”

“Which I will not give,” Celesia says, before motioning her to follow them, twisting and beginning the walk to the library exit. Tristan follows her with perfunctory grace, but Abby stumbles behind them, tripping to the floor before they even get to the end of the aisle. Celesia pauses, before helping her to her feet, eyes straying over her shoulders – but the perception filter is strong and Celesia doesn’t push it, instead looking back at Abby.

The girl is clearly used to such incidents, by her happy chagrin. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Now, to your feet and stay on them,” Celesia replies, before they walk to the console room. During their journey, she sees Tristan open his mouth to speak to Abby, but without prompting, he stops himself from most likely asking a question about the future. Celesia remembers growing up in the House, raised never to question future events – something she’d never made explicit, often or clear in her last face, who would rather set a schedule for Tristan’s life than prepare him for it on his own.

 _He may be autistic, but Tristan has developmental features from both Gallifreyan and Human biology. He is far more self-aware than I was at his age._ Celesia reaches then, tucking his hanging braid behind his ear, unable to resist some form of contact with her son. _You’re doing so well,_ she thinks, catching how Abby smiles at the action.

Upon entering the console room, Abby stands by the quinary and senary piloting stations, glancing at Tristan in surprise when he sits on his usual jumpseat, strapping in.

“Do you not fly, yet?”

“No, he does not,” Celesia replies for him as she picks up her long coat, putting it back on, noticing how the distinct Prydonian colours clash with her TARDIS desktop. _Perhaps a change of colour is in order_. “He will start learning eventually, but first he has to know the basic maintenance and repair of her primary control engines, something else that hasn’t begun yet either.”

“Oh,” Abby shifts a little, then, glancing hesitantly at the quaternary piloting station. “Sorry, I’ve just usually got at least two other pilots with me when I fly. I mean, I could fly my parents’ TARDIS single-handedly, but your one is a bit more complicated and usually Daisy-” she puts a hand over her mouth at that, closing her eyes. “Sorry. Spoilers.”

“Who is Daisy?” Tristan questions, sounding like it burst out of his mouth.

“Spoilers, I can’t say. You’ve never met them, either of you.”

“Stop speaking,” Celesia advises, before joining her at the console, setting the coordinates for her home. Abby leans over, visibly panicking.

“Where are you going? I need you to help me-”

“No. We have plans. Afterwards, you can try to convince me, but until then, you’re staying at my side – do you understand me? I don’t want you wandering off into my TARDIS or out of my range of sight,” Celesia meets her eyes, seeing how Abby swallows what looks to be a tonne of hurt. “We’re going to meet Rory, Amelia and Melody Williams and my cousin, the Doctor. Is it a problem if any of them meet you?”

Abby hesitates, before nodding. “My- Melody. Melody can’t see me. She hasn’t met me yet. The Doctor would recognise me but…I don’t think he would understand. It’s difficult to explain. I’ve had to go under a Chameleon Arch before-”

“I see,” Celesia nods. “I know something of Melody Williams – River Song?”

“She was my professor under the Arch. I mean, I was an intern and I was able to get her into this expedition-” Abby starts to speak more than she should again, Celesia firing up the TARDIS to distract her – which works, thankfully enough. Piloting as only the primary, secondary and tertiary, Celesia has the chance to watch the student snap into focus mode on the quaternary, quinary and senary stations.

“You’re doing well,” Celesia praises, before they begin materialising in front of her garage door. The last rumble from landing then, perhaps predictably, prompts Abby to fall to the ground. Helping her up again as Tristan unbuckles, Celesia looks again at her beads, reading what she can.

 _Eternal_ and _mother,_ again, are some words she catches from the bead she’d seen before. The second bead, however, is far more interesting in that it says _poppy_ and rather than being faded gold, the Gallifreyan is written in dark red. Celesia blinks in surprise.

“You’re a parent?”

“I beg your pardon?” Abby blinks, eyes wide before Celesia reaches over, holding up the bead. “ _Oh_ , no, Poppy isn’t my daughter – she’s my sister. Sort of. It’s complicated.”

“If she isn’t your daughter, then you shouldn’t have used red ink.”

“It’s complicated,” Abby repeats, before Tristan begins to click his fidget cube, anxiety leaking through to Celesia. “Should we go outside?”

“Just a moment longer,” Celesia says, before crouching down, by the console, opening up a locked cabinet and taking out a vial of liquid with a spray lid. “Here. I’m going to give you a disguise. It’ll last a few hours before reversing – it’s some basic time, matter and perception manipulation, Time Lord science. Do you mind?”

“Go right ahead,” Abby waits expectantly. Celesia sprays it, watching the transformation she goes through from pretty white girl in Academy uniform to an even paler, sunburnt ash blonde in shorts and a flannel shirt. Abby glances at herself on the blank, black console screen, smiling. “Last time I used that, it wasn’t half as good as this! It even feels real!” She tugs at her hair a little before clapping her hands excitedly.

“Are we going to meet my secondary progenitor now?” Tristan asks.

“Yes,” Celesia answers his question, taking note of his obvious severe tone and bleakly remembering that her son had experienced several new sensations – like being in trouble and discovering that supposed safety isn’t so safe – not five minutes ago. Going over to his side, she offers her hand and – unusually, but not to her surprise – he takes it immediately. Celesia motions for Abby to exit the TARDIS, watching her and then following close behind, locking it with a frown.

_Is Abby bonded with my TARDIS in the future? How could she have gotten in and out as often as she’s implied?_

“Professor! Hello!” Theta comes barrelling over as they exit, his TARDIS in its usual blue box form…parked on her flowers. Celesia purses her lips and Theta stops abruptly, glancing over and jerking his hands about. “Sorry. Tried to follow your instructions to the _letter_ …well, numeral, but I must have gotten the coordinates wrong. Sorry again.” He looks to Tristan, looking him up and down. “Hello, little one.”

“Hello, Cousin,” Tristan greets, squeezing Celesia’s hand tightly, before looking over at where Rory. “I’m being forced to meet you all.”

Rory, already looking nervous, reacts to that by becoming quite desolate in face. By his side, Amy frowns, forehead pinching together and Melody raises her eyebrows.

“Well, it’s not like any of us expected you existed,” the newly-regenerated variance of a woman says blithely. “I think we even joked about it once.”

“I’m no joke,” Tristan says, before trying and failing to go back into the TARDIS, which is in the form of a light purple VW campervan with curtains. “Mother-”

“No,” Celesia interrupts. “Go make yourself a drink inside. The Doctor can go with you. I need to have a word with the Williams’.”

Tristan clicks his fidget cube loudly, spinning the silver ball in one side before nodding, letting go of her hand to take Theta’s instead, who grins at the contact. However, he does send them all a briefly worried look as Tristan hauls him away into the house. Once the front door is shut, Celesia looks over to the three humanoids, only to be questioned by Abby.

“Should I go with them?”

Celesia shakes her head. “No. Sit over there, on the bench over there, under the window.” Abby bites her lip, before doing as she’s told, Amy peering at her.

“Who are you?”

Abby looks to Celesia, eyes wide with oncoming panic. Celesia speaks clearly. “An intruder. She stays near me.” Her tone brooks no room for any argument and Abby does as she’s told, fidgeting a little before playing with her hair. After watching her a little longer, seeing her settle in place, Celesia looks to the family of three. “I’ll be the first to say I don’t know what I’m doing, in this situation. I hope that Tristan’s existence won’t cause strife between you all.”

“Rory and I weren’t married or in a relationship back then,” Amy said, tense. Rory glances at her, about to speak when she continues, cutting him off. “I don’t mind. I really don’t – Melody? What about you?”

Melody shrugs as everyone looks to her. “He’s my little brother. I’m sure we’ll get on fine.”

“I’m sure you will,” Celesia says diplomatically, before looking to Rory. “May I have a word in private?”

“…yeah. Yes, of course.”

“We’ll go inside,” Amy interjects, grabbing Melody’s wrist – to said woman’s quiet acceptance – and pulling her off towards the front door. Rory shuffles over, closer to Celesia as she leans against her VW-shaped TARDIS. It’s quiet and absurdly peaceful for a meeting like this and Celesia has to push away her frankly irrational fear of- of something she can’t explain. _Just talking to him, maybe._

“Hello,” she greets.

“Hi,” Rory replies, before drawing himself together, breathing deeply. “We have a son, called Tristan. Any last name?”

Celesia takes a moment to think it over, knowing her sons name in its full glory. Unlike on Gallifrey, her son didn’t have the privilege of being able to use the more appropriate derivative casually – not that he would, outside of Gallifrey, unless he chose not to have a title after graduating from the Academy. _That would be quite the dangerous move. Names of time travellers and Time Lords especially, have power._ Tristan nor Celesia have a fake last name that they use on Earth, living in their little estate under various false identities.

“I told you about the importance of Names when I was…not myself,” she eventually speaks.

Rory frowns. “Yeah. Some things didn’t make sense, but yeah.”

“What didn’t make sense to you?”

The Human tucks his hands inside his pockets, rocking on his heels slightly. “If it’s all so important not to know, then what do you call each other?”

“Derivatives, usually. Tristan is the small part of a much longer derivative of his true Name.” Celesia shifts slightly then, glancing at the house, where she can feel Tristan slowly calming. “Mr Williams-”

“Rory, please,” he interrupts. Celesia nods.

“Rory, as the biological father of my son, but not my life partner, I would have you know some of my Name, yet not all of it.”

“Oh…uh, is that okay with you? If it’s because of tradition, I mean I totally get it, but-”

“I will, because I both want and am obliged to. The Doctor will never tell you his derivative Name,” Celesia interrupts, “but he will tell your daughter: both the derivative and more. I chose to be the Professor as he is the Doctor – as the future Melody Williams is River Song. You are not to tell anyone my derivative. You would be wise not to tell any others your daughter’s true name, either. No other Human, no other species in the universe or any others may know my derivative. Not even another Gallifreyan. Do you understand?”

Rory, looking perhaps a little overwhelmed, nod. “Yeah. Yes. I understand.”

“…good.” Celesia spares a glance for Abby on the bench, who had called her _Aunty ‘lesia_. The other Gallifreyan glances over, meeting her eyes and giving an encouraging smile before Celesia looks back at Rory, speaking quietly. “I am the Professor and my name is Celesia Larn. Your son is Tristan Larn.”

“Celesia Larn,” he repeats under his breath. “Tristan Larn. Tristan Larn-Williams.”

“If there comes a time where he needs a Human ID, I’ll write him down as Tristan Williams,” Celesia promises, happy to see him look at her in grateful surprise.

“Thank-you. For saying that; and for having our- our _son._ ” He smiles widely, blinking away tears. “God, I’ve got a _son_. Thank-you. Thank-you for telling me about him and- and helping Melody, too, in Berlin.”

“You’re welcome, Rory.” Celesia gives him a small smile, gesturing to her house. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

“That- that’d be great,” he says, the both of them making their way across the gravel to the door, Abby joining them at Celesia’s command. “So, who are you? How are you an intruder?”

“The Professor had to take a trip inbetween getting here, I think – I stumbled in,” Abby says, sounding surprisingly, genuinely apologetic, despite the lie. “I’m Abby.”

“Rory,” the Human offers as they enter the parlour, Celesia finding herself amused by the Georgian architecture she’d preferred in her last body, used as a basis of design for her home. Now, all the pale walls look bare and empty. “When are you from?”

“Oh, fifty-second century – or thereabouts. My cousin-in-law’s a time traveller though and I convinced him to drop me off for a holiday in this century. I got a bit lost, though, ended up inside that…” Abby looks at Celesia, scrunching her nose up impressively. “TARDIS, was it?”

“Yes,” Celesia replies, before leading them both across the parlour to the open kitchen door, located underneath the stairs. Upon their entrance through said door, Theta looks up with a happy smile.

“Professor! You’ve got a wonderful selection of teas!” he holds up two bags of black tea – PG Tips and Tetley’s – side by side, shaking them slightly. “Do you take sugar?”

Celesia glances around, finding Melody sat at the end of the wooden table in the middle of the kitchen, lounging with her eyes on Tristan, who sits ramrod straight, eyes on Rory. The kettle begins to bubble, but doesn’t click off. Celesia glances at it, finding Amy in her line of sight, hiding it. She makes the assumption that there’s more water than usual at the sight of a line of mugs, counting six and then seven as Amy shuffles a little.

“I don’t know, Doctor. New body, new tastebuds. Miss Williams will be the same, most likely,” Celesia pulls out a chair, looking at Abby pointedly, waiting till she’s sat down to continue. “While we’re on the topic of new bodies, I would offer use of my TARDIS’ wardrobe, if you would like to pull together a more permanent ensemble.”

Melody’s gaze flickers to her. “I’m fine.”

“Who are you?” Theta questions Abby suddenly, frowning, sniffing. He leans a little over the table, setting the tea bags down. “You don’t smell Human.”

“That’s because I’m not one,” the woman says shakily, ducking her head. “I’m Abby.”

“Are you the Professor’s companion? I thought only I did that.”

“I’m perfectly capable of taking companions,” Celesia interjects, not wanting to reveal that Abby is in fact a time traveller from her personal future – especially if she’d already met both he and the future River Song. Theta looks away from Abby, to her. “However, she is actually an accidental stowaway.”

“She said she was an intruder,” Amy adds, backing her up. Celesia is a little surprised, but Amy said it herself – she doesn’t mind. Nodding at her gratefully, Celesia puts a hand on Abby’s shoulder.

“She’s asked for my help returning home. If none of you mind, I’d do that after we’ve all had tea.”

“Of course,” Theta starts, nodding. “Obviously, yes, she needs to get home.” Theta looks back at Abby curiously, peering at her a little more before Celesia looks to Tristan.

“You’re staying here,” Celesia says to her son, who freezes in place. “I won’t be gone for very long, I promise.”

Tristan squeezes his fist around his fidget cube, alien strength showing as it cracks, the plastic splintering. Celesia feels his rising disquiet at the situation through their bond and makes the decision to ignore it, sitting down beside Abby and Melody, across from where Tristan sits. He stares at her, waiting, his emotions mounting and being deliberately set to leak across their bond.

 _Don’t try to manipulate me,_ she sends clearly to him. Tristan puts the broken fidget cube on the table, yellow slithers of plastic skidding off the side.

“So, what do you do around here, then?” Amy questions as the silence goes on. “I mean, I think I know where we are, looking out the window – you can see the main road from here.”

“Mostly, we live normally, but I home-school Tristan. He does the customary lessons of a Gallifreyan child. Today is the first time he’s had the afternoon off since…” Celesia pauses, thinking back. “Since you were ill, a decade ago, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Tristan nods shortly.

“Ooh, really?” Theta jumps in. “How many languages do you speak? Have you learnt how to write in Old High Circular yet?”

“Old High what?” Amy questions.

“Old High Circular Gallifreyan,” Celesia answers as the kettle finishes boiling. “The Latin of Gallifrey. No-one speaks it, but it’s looked down-upon if you can’t write in it by the time you’re a century and a half – and as for Tristan’s fluency, Doctor, punctuation is his last stop before we begin going over stringing sentences together.”

“Poetry or conversational?” he questions quickly, energy positively leaking from his skin as he fidgets and jumps about a little. Celesia considers the question – her old face had wanted Tristan to learn forming sentences in Old High Circular by copying poetry, but now she’s regenerated, Celesia isn’t quite sure.

“What about poetry with conversation inside?” Abby questions and if Celesia hadn’t known she was an Academy student herself, she would have thought her quick-minded. _She most likely learnt through poetry though, by that query._

“They’re different formats,” Celesia specifies, explaining. “Poetry can go on for a very long time in Old High Circular, while conversational drawing assures both an end and potential new material. Poetry is the way most go, however, as it allows the learner to absorb traditional works of art.”

“This is strange,” Theta says, looking perturbed.

“How?” Celesia questions him.

“Well- well _because._ ” He waves his hands around, “I never tell my companions about home and here you are just…gossiping about it.”

Anger flares in her at his comment. “Excuse me? I’m _teaching._ It’s what I _do_ , Doctor. Not everyone wants to go off and save the universe every fortnight.” Theta flinches, Amy clearing her throat tentatively.

“Hey, so…do you take milk and sugar in your tea, Professor? Tristan?”

“Two sugars. No milk, please,” Tristan requests.

“No sugar for me – I figured that out earlier when Melody was learning how to fly,” Celesia murmurs. “Yes to milk, though.” Amy inquires after Abby’s tastes and soon, everyone has a mug in hand.

“So what happens now?” Melody questions.

“Well,” Theta starts, sipping his tea, “I have a present for you and then…whenever you like, I can drop you off. You’ve got a big future ahead of you, Melody Pond, your own path in life to follow.”

“River Song,” she states.

“Not yet,” Theta smiles at her gently. “Not quite. As the Professor said, you’re just a Time Tot.”

“You are?” Tristan frowns then, looking at his sister in confusion. “So am I. How old are you?”

“…sixty something,” Melody replies after a moment’s hesitation. “I don’t know how you’re seventy-seven. You’re so tiny.”

“You’d be tiny too, if you were a normal Gallifreyan – but Amy and Rory Williams are your parents, somehow, both of them.” Tristan frowns. “I saw you regenerate. You were adult-sized before and now, too. What _are_ you?”

“Something special, unique,” Theta answers for the hesitant Melody. “But she was always that. We meet backwards, you see. I’ve already met future Melody, when she’s known as _River Song._ Fabulous woman, absolutely brilliant.”

“I’m not sure whether to feel complimented or terrified, having to live up to that,” Melody jokes, but it falls flat.

“It’s already true,” Rory says, “You were always amazing as Mels anyway – you were our best friend for a reason.”

“Thanks Dad.”

“Yeah, you’re brilliant already, Melody,” Amy nods her head sharply, clutching her tea with a glare aimed at the Doctor. “Don’t let the Doctor get you down.”

Melody smiles at her, eyes crinkling, “Thank-you, Mother.”

“You’re all so nice,” Abby says, sounding slightly wistful as she sips her tea. Celesia glances at her with a slightly raised eyebrow.

“Nice?” Rory repeats, sounding amused. “Well, that’s a new one.”

“Abby – Abby what?” Theta questions suddenly, focusing in on her with a deep-set frown. “Have we met before? I would have sworn you were familiar,” he brings out what must have been the newest incarnation of his _sonic screwdriver_ , a gold and bronze device with a green bulb on the end. He points it at Abby, a buzzing sound emitting from it as the disguised woman stiffens. Celesia stays lax as he peers at the readings. “Ahh! Haven’t seen that in a while…”

“Seen what? Doctor?” Amy starts, standing straight. Rory, still standing, edges away from her, while both Melody and Tristan look to Theta.

“She’s in disguise – it won’t wear off for a couple more hours, unless I use the sonic to reverse the transformation.” Theta focuses on the sonic, starting to fiddle even as Abby puts her mug down to speak.

“Please don’t,” she pleads. “Time travel makes meeting people difficult. I don’t meet my- Ms _Melody_ ,” she stumbles over her name, “for a while yet.” Melody switches her attention to Abby, but Celesia stands, tugging Abby to her feet, speaking before she can get any sort of quip out.

“We’re done here. Let’s get you back on track. No more breaking the rules of time-”

“Got it!” Theta exclaims, before pointing the lit-up sonic at Abby, whose disguise melts away. Immediately, she freezes, the Doctor’s eyes going wide.

“Miss Evangelista?”

Abby cringes, “Hello, Doctor.”

“But- but you…how do you know me? You…” Theta stares at her, voice impossibly soft, eyes wide. Abby delicately pushes Celesia’s hand from her upper arm, clearing her throat.

“Spoilers, I’m afraid. Sorry,” she tilts her head, grimacing.

Celesia knows he’ll notice her uniform eventually, if he hasn’t already. It makes her uncomfortable and revulsion sweeps through her being. This Abby – this _Miss Evangelista_ – is blatantly breaking the Rules of Time. Even Theta looks horrified at seeing her, gaze flickering to Melody and back. He _knows_ her and while Abby has explicitly stated she’s met him before, the way Theta looks and speaks tells Celesia something important about how their acquaintance ended _._

Celesia doesn’t know how to fix this – even mitigating the effects could prove disastrous. _I don’t know the full story and I shouldn’t. I already know enough about my personal future._

“This is up to you,” she says to Abby directly, who turns to face her, startled. “You cannot tell us _anything_. You’re already breaking so many rules by being here.”

“I know I am,” Abby swallows. “I’ve broken Rules before, to keep my family safe.”

“No,” Celesia puts her hand up, voice sharp. “You don’t talk about your family. You don’t talk about events – past, present or future.”

“But-”

“But nothing. No more talking. You’ve done enough. We’re leaving _now_ , before you can mess anything else up.” The expression that forms on Abby’s face is nothing short of heartbreak and Celesia supposes, when she finally knows this girl in the future and looks back on this day, she’ll feel terrible. _I don’t know you,_ Celesia thinks, before looking to Rory. “Keep an eye on Tristan, please.”

“Where are you going?” he questions, glancing at Abby.

“Whenever this girl belongs,” Celesia replies, before taking her wrist, leading her forcefully out of her kitchen and house, back to her TARDIS. In her chest, anger bubbles slowly but steadily. Her TARDIS accepts her detached violence as she slams levers and smashes buttons to get to the Vortex. Abby holds onto a handle on the wall rather than help pilot or sit in a jumpseat.

“What did you need me to help you with?” Celesia questions, voice measured, but her fists are clenched and her shoulders hunched.

“I- I need you to get my past self out of the Library. She’s still Human. The Vashta Nerada would have eaten her…”

“Anything else?”

“We need to fake my death, get a skeleton-”

“How tall are you?”

The mission is hardly difficult. Piloting her TARDIS into the Library as quietly as she can, following Abby’s directions and seeking out the only life-sign separate from a group, Celesia lands her TARDIS in the middle of a lecturers square.

“What now?”

“We wait till I show…up,” Abby frowns, looking at the console screen. “Wait, where are we? Where’s the chair?”

Celesia glances around. “I’ll assume that most likely, we _are_ the chair.”

“Oh, but… _oh,_ ” Abby looks around in awe. “You’re amazing, you really are.”

“…thank-you?” Celesia raises an eyebrow, before feeling the appreciation from her TT Capsule. Looking to the time rotor, Celesia inquires why Abby might be complimenting her before seeing Abby herself on the console, approaching the chair carefully, head tilting as she stares at the disguised TARDIS.

“Miss Evangelista,” Abby stands up straighter, before going to the doors. “Get ready to change your outer shell. Be interactive.”

“I don’t-” Celesia stops, watching as Abby opens the door, stepping outside. A second later, there’s a scream before Abby hauls a struggling Miss Evangelista inside the console room. Baffled, Celesia stares as Abby kicks the door shut, holding Miss Evangelista’s arms behind her, tugging her further into the TARDIS.

“Who are you? Where have you taken me?”

“You’re safe and I’m you, from the future,” Abby replies, before forcibly putting her on the ground. The girl scrambles away from them both, looking absolutely terrified.

“You look like me.”

“I would, because I am.”

“Am- you- you’re me? From the _future?_ ”

“This is our aunt,” Abby says calmly, crouching in front of her. “You won’t understand how, but she is. She’s like the Doctor, who you just met before – Donna and Professor Song’s friend.”

“…oh.” Miss Evangelista looks to Celesia, who forces herself to nod in greeting. “Hello.”

“Hello,” Celesia says, before looking to Abby. “Where does she need to be?”

“We can’t go yet,” Abby says, eyes fixing on the console screen. Celesia turns, watching as a group of men and women in spacesuits – plus who could only be another regeneration of her cousin, prior to _Thirteen_ – gather around her TARDIS. “They’re seeing my skeleton in a chair. Professor Song knows I’m not dead, really, but she didn’t know how or when. I think what happened earlier, at your house, it was supposed to happen.”

“Perhaps. But don’t assume. Time can be rewritten.”

“What are you talking about?” Miss Evangelista interrupts. “What’s really going on?”

“We just saved your life,” Abby answers. “But to do that, we had to fake your death – but that reminds me.” She stands up, going over to stand by Celesia, typing on the keyboard while simultaneously taking a clear piece of glass out of her pocket. Said glass then turns out to be some sort of device, Abby pressing her finger to the front and switching it on. A set of space-time coordinates appear, which she reads out to the navigation system. The TARDIS takes them in.

“Sorry, but you said to be specific – couldn’t be too late or too early. The self-destruct takes precedence over intruder alerts, but we have to get there before Professor Song plugs in.” Abby then ducks over to the trap-door to the engine.

Celesia steps on it.

“What are you doing?”

Abby looks up at her through her silky hair, “We installed a reverse time pocket under a grate. We put things into it. It should have been here all along. I just need to get some stuff out. We need to save her life.”

“Whose life? We just saved yours,” Celesia questions, not moving.

“What is going on?” Miss Evangelista asks hysterically, only to be ignored.

Abby tugs on the trap-door. “Professor Song’s. She’s going to do something that will save everyone in my Library’s database-” Celesia frowns, thinking, _what?_ “-but we can do it for her. All we need to do is get in position after I install a modified scan of Miss Evangelista’s brain.”

“My brain?”

“Yes, your brain, it’s okay – I just need to download a copy of your brainwaves from your green-lights,” Abby replies, glancing at her. “I need you to pretend you died, when you get into the Mainframe. Remember that.”

“Why do I need to remember th-”

“Aunty ‘lesia,” Abby looks back up at her pleadingly. “Please. I need to save River. _Please._ ”

Celesia hesitates. Everything about this situation is _wrong._ She shouldn’t be crossing time-streams, she shouldn’t be entertaining people who have and most certainly, she shouldn’t be manipulating events _on purpose._ Abby looks at her with quickly-watering eyes, lips trembling. Celesia can’t help but look at her shoulders, looking past the perception filters to the ranks and course names.

_JUNIOR FOURTH TIME LORD_

_STANDARD PRE-BASIC MODULES_

The Time Lady feels like she’s about to have heart-attacks. _Junior Third – she’s not even ten years into the Academy._ Celesia remembers how the Academy works, intimately. She’d taught there after graduating, after all. One hundred and twenty years of schooling, split into four separate sections – First, Second, Third and Fourth – then split again into three – Junior, Senior and Journeyman.

 _She’s a Time Tot, for all her centuries, barely more than a Gallifreyan if she even is one. She has no idea what she’s doing, no idea about true time travel or the consequences. She only knows what she’s grown up with and…_ Celesia moves her foot off the trap-door.

_And what I’ve taught her – and clearly, we’ve been planning this for a long time._


	3. episode one: foundations (part three)

The problem with manipulating events is that there’s usually a limited window of time in which you can actually manipulate things. Using the space-time coordinates provided by Abby, Celesia carefully pilots her TARDIS, Abby herself helping as the quaternary, quinary and senary pilot. Between them both, they land in the core of the Library, once more disguised as a chair.

“It’s more like a throne,” Abby points out with a breath of obvious relief as she streams bright, white lights into the red-flashing room, setting them on the ground. To Celesia’s vague interest, there are perception filters on them. _Why would lights have perception filters?_ “River’s going to sit on it.”

“What are we doing here?” Celesia cuts to the chase, eyeing the shadows. _Flesh-eating nanobeings of the dark…_

“Rerouting the connection between the hard-drive and the databanks.” Abby explains, adjusting the lights. “The Vashta Nerada hatched here, from the books. After realising what was happening- CAL, the computer, she…she used the teleports to get all the people on the planet off. But there was nowhere for them to go, so I saved them to the hard-drive. She. _She_ saved them to the hard-drive.”

Celesia glances over at Abby, counting up all the times she’s slipped like this. The questions begin to pile up in her mind and as much as she wants to push them away, suppress them inside her brain, Celesia is becoming far more aware of how much meddling she’ll have to do in the future. _The fact that everything’s flashing isn’t doing me much good either,_ she think, glancing around and grimacing at the timer on a screen.

“That auto-destruct isn’t giving us a lot of time to do anything.”

“We just need to hook your TARDIS up as a secret memory bank,” Abby says before hauling wires and cables out of the upright databanks. “Come _on_ , we don’t have a lot of time – the Doctor will be here any minute and we still need to go back to when the Library went silent to upload Miss Evangelista. It’s the only time we’ve got to do it in.”

“Dear Rassilon,” Celesia mutters before rushing to help her future niece, scanning the tech and thanking the designers for using the most well-known schematics in the universe. _Even Tristan would know what to do here_.

Her TARDIS, thankfully, seems to know exactly what’s needed of her. Sockets are on either side of her throne-forms arms and Celesia and Abby have the majority of them plugged in before the sound of a gravity lift attracts their dual attention.

“They’re here, we have to go,” Abby hisses, before they clamber behind the chair through the waiting opening – more of a slit in the fabric of reality than a door. Once inside, they shut the door and Miss Evangelista looks over at them.

“Professor Song and the Doctor are here and Anita, I think,” she explains anxiously, hand on the console screen. Celesia makes her way over, watching as the younger Theta rushes to the rescue. _Suicidal idiot,_ she thinks when he explains how he’ll hook himself up to give the computer more memory space, but very soon afterwards her heart wrenches because this _Anita_ woman is dead. Miss Evangelista screams and cries when her skull becomes visible inside her helmet.

Celesia does truly have to give her cousin credit, however, after her body finally collapses. “He bargained with them,” she mutters. “He speaks to them. Who does that?”

“My dad,” Abby says, sounding proud. A long moment passes as Celesia digests this, before Abby groans, putting her hands on her face. “I didn’t say that. I _didn’t say_ that!”

“Dad doesn’t do that, does he?” Miss Evangelista frowns, eyebrows knitting together. Abby peeks through her hands at her.

“He does, all the time. You don’t- _won’t_ remember everything, but you will remember some things. That isn’t Dad yet – this is the younger version, a Doctor who’s barely even met our mother. I’ve only ever seen him like this before today as you.”

Miss Evangelista swallows but nods, clearly scared and terrified. Abby goes to move closer to her then, but River Song knocking Theta out attracts their attention. Celesia stares at the screen for a long few moments, opinion of River Song rising exponentially. They watch as she moves him, handcuffing him to a rail, Abby muttering apologies on the archaeologist’s behalf as she liberates him of his sonic screwdriver, setting it down with her own on top of an old blue book.

_Of **course** this is Theta’s wife. She’s a self-sacrificial idiot, too. Why are all the cleverest of my House so stupid?_

As Celesia thinks this, River speaks up warily, glancing around. “ _Abigail? Are you here?_ ”

Abby immediately runs for the door, leaving the TARDIS and barrelling into the woman who could only be her mother.

Their reunion looks to be lovely – Celesia asks her TARDIS to mute the screen. Miss Evangelista goes to go outside as well after a few moments, but Celesia grabs her arm.

“No, you’re staying in here. Don’t go out those doors,” she orders, staring Miss Evangelista down until she gets a timid trio of nods. Upon seeing the confirmation, Celesia herself makes her way outside, clearing her throat as she watches the end of Abby and River’s mother-daughter reunion, their arms wrapped around each other tightly, black against white. In a brief moment of wishful thinking, Celesia wonders if Tristan ever would let her hold him like that.

“Professor,” River greets with a trembling smile once they part, hands interlocking instead of arms. “Nice to see you.” Celesia defers from speaking, instead giving a short nod. Abby clears her throat awkwardly.

“Uh…she’s only just met you, Mum. In Nazi Germany. I-I just met you, as well?” Abby cringes, while River’s eyebrows shoot up.

“ _Oh?_ Well now, I have to wonder what’s going to happen next, then, before you go back.”

“No spoilers,” Celesia half snaps, still slightly angry at the situation. River gives her an unamused look, before looking to Abby.

“I’ll assume the Professor’s TARDIS is our actual memory space.”

“Yes and maybe, if you have to be sitting on it-”

“The TARDIS can absorb me and to the Doctor’s eyes, I’ve been disintegrated or something or other and I’ll cut off the signal between my suit and the sonic after. Well done, sweetie.” River reaches up her spare hand, pressing it to Abby’s cheek, getting a small blush from her daughter, before River looks to Celesia. “Thank-you as well, Professor. Let’s finish hooking up the TARDIS, why don’t we?”

“Let’s,” Celesia agrees, looking away and finding a set of cables to transfer and fiddle with, crouching and communicating with her Type Seventy on how to proceed. _Will you do this?_ The positive response she receives is both good yet disheartening. In Celesia’s mind, a TARDIS should be one of the few types of beings that agrees with the Laws of Time.

“Professor?”

“Yes?” Celesia replies to River’s call, being drawn out of her focus mode.

“Abby says you already have Miss Evangelista,” she starts, “so I was wondering if you could let her regain her true nature inside your TARDIS. Abby’s memory has always been missing from when she changed back. It would make perfect sense for it to happen while in the presence of her older self, rather than blame some form of post-trauma amnesia – and much safer.”

“It would make sense,” Celesia agrees, finishing the last transfer of the required cables on her side. Looking to Abby and River shows they’re both finishing up as well. She leans back a little as River climbs up onto the TARDIS, who hums in Celesia’s mind at her presence. _Warmth, recognition, glee._ “My TARDIS likes you.”

“All TARDISes like me,” River smiles conspiratorially at her, eyes crinkling. “I’m family and the youngest, at that. They always make me feel like a child again, even though I haven’t been one in hundreds of years.” As Celesia frowns, glancing to Abby’s braided hair, River brings a hand up, twisting it through her hair to show three beads in the middle of her high mess of a ponytail.

“When did you become an adult?”

“I’d assume at eighty, or ninety,” River says, still smiling as she pulls cables up onto her lap on either side, which she would have to plug in to activate the transfer through the TARDIS memory banks. “The me back at your home isn’t quite there yet. She’s got some growing to do before becoming River Song. When she takes on that mantle…then yes, I do think that’s when she’s ready.”

“Providing you aren’t lying,” Celesia tilts her head, “thank-you for the information.”

“Any time, sweetie – I think he’s waking up though. Back into the TARDIS with the both of you. I’ll join you soon.”

“Okay,” Abby says, reaching up to press a kiss to her cheek before stepping back and tripping over a loose cable. River lets out a short laugh as Abby tumbles backwards onto the ground with a small _oomph_ , lying there for a moment before shaking her head. “I’m always doing that.”

“Yes, you are,” River agrees happily. “Now _go._ I’ve got to pretend I’m about to die.”

“Make a show of it,” Abby advises merrily before Celesia helps her to her feet, the two of them slipping into the TARDIS again.

Miss Evangelista’s sitting in Tristan’s seat, buckled in. Abby’s happy expression flickers briefly, before she plods on forwards with Celesia to the console, looking at the screen. A strange admiration flows through Celesia as they watch – truly, River Song puts on an impressive show. Leaning dark hands on the console edge, Celesia glances at her jacket, the dark red fabric cast in an odd purple sheen from the time rotor.

 _Redecoration may be in order later,_ she thinks to her TARDIS, trying to recall if Chameleon Arch-reversal involves much damage. Celesia glances at Miss Evangelista. _She’ll scream._ Chameleon Arches are no fun at all, if records from those previously experienced in the process are true to their word. _Your entire biology rewritten, your memory wiped and everything you are, were and could be stored in a pocket-watch._

The countdown for the auto-destruct – _Abby called it self-destruct_ – starts to truly end then, Theta staring painfully at his will-be wife as she connects the plugs together. Then the lights Abby had set up earlier increase in intensity enough to nearly blind Theta, who turns away right before the TARDIS sucks River inside. She appears through the ceiling, naturally, falling to the ground and letting out a yelp as she lands on white, solid ground. Miss Evangelista squeaks and Abby rushes to help her up, while Celesia watches her cousin look back, becoming despondent.

On another part of the screen however, a readout shows the data process. To Celesia’s mild satisfaction, the four thousand and twenty-two beings that had been stored inside the hard-drive have already rematerialised inside the Library.

“Of all the ways I’ve entered a TARDIS, that is by far the strangest,” River says as she sits up, pinpointing Miss Evangelista and letting out a relieved sound. “Hello.”

“Hello, Professor Song,” Miss Evangelista says, before straightening in her seat. “Professor, what’s really going on? That- this girl who looks like me says she’s- says she’s _me_ , from the _future._ ” The Arch’ed woman bites her lip briefly. “She calls you her mother. Is…is she really telling the truth? What’s going on?”

“Sweetie, you’ll understand soon, I promise you that,” River says gently, meeting her eyes. “Just wait a little longer for all the answers to your questions. There are just a few more things we need to do.”

“O-O-Okay,” she stutters, before River gets to her feet.

“Good girl.”

“Where now?” Celesia questions Abby, who licks her lips.

“Voice navigation: set space-time coordinates to here, but to the day the Library went silent – or the day before. Might be safer, that way.” Celesia glances at the monitor, which show the day before – but inwardly, across their bond, Celesia feels something that resonates with her connection to the Vortex. _Wait. Not yet._ “Aren’t…aren’t we going?”

“Not yet,” Celesia repeats, before motioning to Miss Evangelista. “I thought you needed her brain-scan?”

“Yes,” Abby says, making her way over. Celesia watches long enough to see another sonic device, in the shape of a spanner with small, rectangular green lights halfway up the handle. Abby puts the bolt-hold around Miss Evangelista’s green data-lights, pressing buttons on the spanner – which is when Celesia looks away, back to her console. Theta still sits, staring at the empty throne of an outer shell.

“We’ll be here a few hours, at least,” River says, coming up beside her. “The Doctor has to upload my data-ghost to the Library. He’s told me the bare bones of my death.”

“Supposed death,” Celesia corrects, watching her cousin just stare abysmally at the TARDIS. _So beleaguered with future knowledge that he can’t see past a damn chameleon circuit._

“Hmm, yes, I suppose. Though, to be fair, I will make it very convincing – my data-ghost is going to be in for hell, in that computer, waiting for a rewritten timeline.”

“The rewritten part, or the original?”

“The original, unfortunately.”

“Time is strange when it comes to living beings in mainframes,” Celesia says distantly, thinking of the repercussions. She isn’t very familiar with this data-ghost technology and the action of uploading a consciousness preserved in such a manner, but if it’s anything like the Time Lord Matrix, River Song’s data-ghost will pass every second knowing it, even despite the differential in space-time between each ‘realm’, as it were.

 _I wonder if I could do something – hook up the Library to the Matrix. Then maybe, the data-ghost will have a chance at making friends with other deceased Time Lords and perhaps even renewed life instead of that eternal torture._ It would have to be the Matrix of the past, if she did it. No way in hell is Celesia attempting to do that in a warzone.

 _Or maybe that’s exactly what I do,_ she thinks suddenly, shoulders shifting. _Maybe introducing an outside source into the Matrix- but no, the Time War is too important. But…Time Lords have been executed for less._

“What are you thinking about?” River asks. “You’ve got a face on.”

“Everyone has a face,” Celesia says blankly, not quite sure how to answer otherwise, still focused on her future and the potential of giving this data-ghost a life.

“Tell me what you’re thinking about, Professor.” River meets her eyes, looking serious, focussing completely on Celesia. It’d a strange feeling, to be looked at in such a way. _I mean something to her in the future. Which makes sense, in retrospect – I **am** her brothers mother._

“I’ve seen myself die – it’s an inevitability that I be executed by the High Council of Gallifrey, that I return to the Time War. My death is a fixed event and I know that it takes place inside the Time War, during my final regeneration. My next face. Have I ever told you that before?”

“No,” River says, frown flickering. “You haven’t. The you that I know in the future, she’s regenerated already, but not dead or missing.”

“I see,” Celesia replies, before looking back to Abby and Miss Evangelista again. The sonic spanner is gone and Miss Evangelista is peering at a silver fobwatch. Abby unbuckles her from the seat and steps back as she opens the watch, golden light streaming from it. Like Celesia thought she would before, Miss Evangelista screams and unprepared, Celesia flinches, pressing up against her console.

When it finishes, Abby tilts her past self’s chin up, meeting her oddly clear eyes.

“Hey, how’re you doing?”

“…where’s Poppy?” she rasps, looking to River, whose pleasant expression wavers. The past Abby looks to Celesia, before coughing, leaning into her future self.

“For names, call this one Abby and me Abby-Raine,” the future Abby – Abby-Raine – says, before pulling young Abby to her feet. “Poppy’s with Dad and Jamie, on Darillium.”

“Basil,” Abby says shortly, prompting a twitch from Abby-Raine’s lip and confusion from Celesia as River shakes her head.

“I hate that man.”

“You love him very much,” Abby and Abby-Raine say in unison, before Abby staggers to a stand, shaking her head and immediately tripping over her own feet.

“I think you should get changed into something less bulky,” Abby-Raine says, pulling her younger self to her feet. Abby nods and the two make their way quickly to a door, leaving Celesia and River in the console room.

“So, how’s my baby brother?”

“Having tea with you in two thousand and eleven,” Celesia replies.

“Would you like to know how he _will_ be?”

“No, thank-you,” Celesia replies evenly, even though she itches to know, all of a sudden. Is her son alive in River’s time? Has he regenerated? How old is he? _Am I still with him?_

“Alright, then,” River says, before tapping her chest. “I’m going to do an Abby and change. It’s a bit stuffy in this.”

Celesia watches as she too leaves the console room. Once River is out of sight, Celesia forces herself to sit on the ground, crossing her legs and putting her hands in her pockets. Everything is so… _convoluted;_ and what now? _Do I take Abby somewhere? Do I let River and Abby-Raine bring her along with them? Omega – this is why the Doctor is called a renegade._

She wants to see Tristan again. She wants to live in her house with her son, uninvolved and alone. She wants to teach her son Old High Circular Gallifreyan, the Laws of Time and how to fly her TARDIS. Celesia doesn’t want to get involved with her cousins’ affairs, even if she does want to meet with him often, as two of very few Time Lord Renegades left in the universe, who’ve escaped both Gallifrey and the Time War. _I don’t even know where in the War he comes from – if it’s ended for him, or if he escaped like I did. Has he seen his death like I have? Theta is on his thirteenth regeneration, his **thirteenth**. He doesn’t have much time left in the universe. Five thousand years at most._

“What other Renegade Time Lords are out there? Mortimus? The Rani? Madrigor? Shazar? The Corsair?” Celesia scoffs slightly, shaking her head. “The Master’s probably plotting somewhere, the incorrigible oaf…”

This situation – this rescue mission, it isn’t what Celesia signed up for when she ran away. _You didn’t sign up for Tristan either,_ the thought appears in her mind, _but you would never take him back._

“This is different,” she mumbles to herself, before cringing. “I talk to myself, _no_. I haven’t done that since my third face.”

Celesia shuts her eyes, deciding to take a nap. Blindly getting comfortable against her console, Celesia decides to get a seat-back set in around where she’s sitting now, when she redecorates. _Do you think you could do that, my dear? I’d be very grateful for it._

Her TARDIS hums in her mind, a far clearer and stronger presence than usual. Her brain doesn’t shut off when she sleeps – or naps – only gets faster and Celesia organises her head, reviewing the events of the past few days and filing them in the appropriate section of her mind. The first experiences of this new regeneration get stored with her others, a new drawer about her blood family updates to include _Melody Williams | River Song_ and this untidy timeline she’ll have to live through – with causality loops abound, blatant abuse of time travel and averting seemingly fixed events – has its own dedicated room in her head.

“Aunty Celesia?” comes the voice of Abby-Raine. Celesia opens her eyes, startling awake at her common nickname. Looking to the culprit, Celesia has a moment where she wonders if, in actuality, it’s _young_ Abby speaking to her, until Abby-Raine – still wearing her Academy uniform, unlike Abby, who wears white Converse, a summery, pastel flower dress and a warm orange pullover under a brown pinstripe blazer, hair still up in a high ponytail – continues onwards. “Is it time for us to go, yet?”

Celesia takes a second to stand, looking to her console and asking her TARDIS. However, that is when the screen flashes to get their attention, showing Theta running through the planet core to the hard-drive, River Song’s sonic screwdriver in hand. He plugs it in and the charge is visible as River’s last brain-scan transfers to the hard-drive.

“There we go. He just can't do it, can he?” River herself murmurs, coming up to Celesia’s side, pressing her fingers to the edge of the screen. “That man, that impossible man…he just can’t give in.”

“He’s always been stubborn. Particularly obstinate at times as well, if I am recalling some stories correctly,” Celesia replies, before watching him as he leans against the computer, just staring at the sonic with a sad, pained grin. “How long have you known each other?”

“All my life and his, too – I’ve popped in and out with various disguises and memory-erasing drugs before he’s supposed to know me, but, well…I’m closer to four hundred than three, despite what I might say, sometimes. The longest I’ve gone without seeing him is probably during my childhood and even then, he checked in on me.”

“I don’t like this, Professor Song,” Celesia murmurs, “and if you know me, then you’ll understand that. I’m barely a Renegade, not like the Doctor. When and where are we heading, after leaving here and uploading Miss Evangelista?”

River sobers, smile leaving her face. “Professor, I need you to understand something. This path you’re treading now, it isn’t going to suddenly stop. You have been in this ever since you stepped inside your TARDIS. In some ways, you’ve been in it longer than you realise.”

“How?” Celesia questions, looking at her sharply. River’s smile reappears, a laugh escaping her.

“Spoilers, sweetie. You have to live it and realise for yourself. You know the rules better than anyone – even the Doctor.”

“The Doctor didn’t study in school,” Celesia grumbles, looking back to the screen, which he’s finally backing away from, giving her TARDIS a long, sad look. “I don’t know why people hold him up as such a great Time Lord – he’s practically a common Gallifreyan, how little he knows.”

“Experience makes up for his theoretical knowledge, you’ll find,” River says wryly, amused. They watch the screen. When Theta takes the gravity lift back up to the Library’s surface, Celesia pilots her TT Capsule into the past, ignoring how Abby and Abby-Raine trip in sync as they touch down.

“Get her uploaded,” Celesia orders, before walking off into the TARDIS in search of the required components. River follows her, to her mild irritation.

“What are you doing?”

“Something idiotic that my cousin would either very much approve of, or would kill me for even wondering about,” Celesia walks down the corridor, stopping at a door her TARDIS mentally indicates to. Going inside, Celesia finds herself in an engineer’s paradise. _I **have** to come back here,_ she thinks determinedly, practically salivating over all the technology around her, at her disposal, before letting her TARDIS guide her through the room. As she makes her way to a set of shelves, she sees River move to pick something up and twists quickly, a yell on her lips as she realises just what exactly it is. “Don’t touch that!”

River freezes, eyes flickering over to her. “What is it?”

Celesia glances down at the circular golden disc, eyes blown wide. “If you’ve not seen one before, you may still be vying for your husband’s affections.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a Confession Dial,” Celesia whispers lowly, slightly reverent as she stares at it. “A Time Lord is summoned inside to find inner peace before being uploaded to the Matrix, a short time before their death. It’s a sacred tradition. Not many things are sacred on Gallifrey, anymore.”

“I’ve heard of them before, actually, then,” River takes her hands back slowly, eyeing it with… _loathing? What cause has she to hate Confession Dials?_ “The Doctor – the future Doctor, I mean. The Time Lords trapped him inside it and tortured him for four and a half billion years.”

“…they _what?_ ” Celesia stares in disbelief at the woman, who nods shortly. “No- _no._ They wouldn’t _do_ that. The journey through a Confession Dial is one of the most respected traditions on Gallifrey-”

“Not after the Time War ends, Professor,” River interrupts, eyes hard. “Why is one of those things here, in your TARDIS?”

Celesia takes a few moments to compose herself, before speaking her thoughts. “It wasn’t always my TARDIS.”

“Did the previous owner die, then?”

“Their Confession Dial wouldn’t be active, if they were,” Celesia says, nodding to it. “I can hear it, all the cogs turning – time manifests around it like a shroud. If you had gotten any closer, it would have zapped you. Either they’re alive, or they’re inside.” _I need to get it to the Zero Room,_ she thinks, frowning. _Just in case._ How, though?

“That’s a bit dangerous.”

“Yes, it is. When they come out, they’ll be waiting for death, most likely thinking that they’re still in the lowlands. So much time has passed out here, though – it can take from a few hours to a few hundred years. I don’t know how long they’ve been in there already.”

“Is there any way to pick it up?”

“Probably,” Celesia tilts her head, mind reaching back to her years in the Academy, learning about all of these things. “I’ll invent something. I know the mechanics of the Confession Dial and its defences – every Dial is the same. Do you mind leaving behind your space suits’ gloves?”

Gaining River’s agreement, Celesia looks back to the set of shelves her TARDIS had led her to. Eyes roving over every item, she soon finds what she’s looking for, thankful that it was law for Type Sixty’s and above had to have one. Taking it from the shelf, Celesia checks over small, flashing beacon, nodding to herself upon seeing it is intact.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a connection to the Matrix. When the Time War started, it was required of every TARDIS in circulation to have a beacon like this, so that in the event of imminent or recent death, the Time Lord pilots could automatically upload the most recent scans of their brain. There’s some Time Lord technology that allows for it to happen a short amount of time prior to the device’s destruction as well, in case the TT Capsule it flies in is destroyed. Using this, I can hijack the connection to the Matrix and modify when the brain scans are uploaded, rather than establish a unique trail.”

“Why, though?”

Celesia glances at River. “Your data-ghost is still a person. She shouldn’t be alone in that hard-drive. I’m giving her the chance to go somewhere new, if she wants to. There’d be no way back – it’s a one-way connection – but millions of Time Lords that are dead and gone have been uploaded already.” The look on River’s face makes Celesia feel slightly embarrassed.

“You don’t even know me yet.”

“I do know you, Melody,” Celesia murmurs, fiddling with a loose lid on one side of the beacon. “I helped you save the Doctor’s life in Berlin – I had Joseph spy on you for years while you lived in Leadworth. My son is your brother. I might only know you a little, but I do know you, Ms Williams.”

“…it’s technically Professor Williams, nowadays, or Sigma.”

“A differential,” Celesia mutters with a slight smile, inwardly classing the future River Song as _Professor Williams | River Sigma_ , happy to know that Theta let her use Sigma as her last name, as his father let Penelope. _Excellent._ “How many names do you have now, River?”

“Too many. Far, _far_ too many.”

Celesia smiles at the woman as she laughs, walking at her side as they go back to the console room, where the Abby’s both lean against the console, chatting in Gallifreyan. Hearing her native language from people other than her son and cousin makes her chest ache sharply, but it’s a good pain. _There’s still a future for Gallifrey, for my culture, living on in this child – and most likely, that Poppy girl, too._

Slipping out of the TARDIS, leaving the three women inside, Celesia makes quick work of hooking the beacon up to the computer, tucking it away where it can’t be seen. Then comes the tricky part. Using the Library computer, Celesia starts rewriting part of the coding in the beacon, changing its protocols. Usually, a beacon doesn’t open the connection to the Matrix unless it’s sending brain scans, but Celesia understands that despite what she’s doing, the data-ghost of River Song may not truly want to be part of the Matrix. _I’ll offer her that choice, at least, that no-one else did._ It was – and still is, in Celesia’s mind – illegal not to have at least a preliminary brain scan stored in the Matrix, if you were a Gallifreyan Time Lord, at least.

The computer – CAL – reacts to the new technology with interest, but a red light starts to flash in the corner of the room and Celesia can hear faint voices.

“Professor Song, would you mind assisting me?” she questions, the woman appearing just in time for two humanoids to turn the corner, coming into sight.

“Hey-” one starts, before River shoots them both in short succession. Celesia spares her a short glance.

“Stun gun,” River smiles fondly, tucking the device into a belt holster. With the spacesuit gone, Celesia thinks maybe it had been a little…less revealing than the shirt-dress she’s chosen in its place, silky blue fabric cinched at her waist. “I’ll keep a lookout. How long until you’re done?”

“Not too long,” Celesia replies, before turning back to the computer. CAL tries to hack through the beacon, but unsurprisingly cannot get through – the beacon can tell that CAL isn’t a Time Lord, though it does confuse Celesia somewhat. “River, does this computer happen to have a consciousness inside of it?”

“Charlotte Abigail Lux,” River replies. “A dying little girl whose family gave her every book in creation and forever to read them. She’s the main computer node.”

“I see,” Celesia murmurs, before making a snap decision. Tying off the unfinished reprogramming, she detours to the beacon and the Matrix’s acceptance policies, using a timer of one hundred and fifty years, with a closing return to normality a minute afterwards. _A dying little girl_ , the words reverberate through her head and Celesia thinks, _Theta called me kind, once, when we were children. I think he was right, even back then. If ‘kind’ is interchangeable with ‘decent’, at least._

Celesia thinks of Abby inside her TARDIS, twice-over.

“What are you doing?” River asks idly, twirling her stun gun. “Other than connecting it to the Matrix, I mean?”

“I’m giving Charlotte a chance to have a new life, if she wants,” Celesia explains distractedly. “I’m leaving some instructions for her to follow – such as leaving a copy of herself here, to run the Library and keep an eye on both the Vashta Nerada and the connection to the Matrix, if she takes this chance. She’s only got so long to do so.”

“You’re letting her soul escape the Library, like mine.”

“If she’s clever – and I do believe she must be, converted into a computer as she is – then Charlotte’ll may find her way to the Loom as well. She’ll have a _real_ chance then, for a new family and a new life.”

“You don’t call her CAL.”

Celesia glances over at River. “Charlotte Abigail,” she says, instead of replying to her statement. Her chest grows tight, but Celesia presses on, finishing the new coding and twisting properly to stand her ground in front of the strange amalgam of Human and Time Lord. _As if Time Lords are a race of their own,_ she scoffs inside. “In your present, the Time War is over – you gave away as much, earlier, when we were talking about Confession Dials. The Time Lords tortured my cousin. He’s obviously still alive.”

“Stop pushing, Professor,” River starts to warn, before Celesia shakes her head.

“No, because you know what else? Abby is wearing an Academy uniform. I knew that from the start. She is a student in the Time Lord Academy. The Time War ends and _your daughter_ is learning what it means to become a true Time Lady. My only problem with that is how old she is and how she still, despite her supposed age, cannot keep her own cover straight. Charlotte Abigail Lux will find her way to the Looms, eventually. I may hate all of this meddling, but do not think for one second that I am blind, deaf or naïve. Charlotte _Abigail_ Lux. You always knew I was going to do this.”

River’s gaze hardens. “Do you regret it?”

“Regret? No. My family keeps getting bigger every time I blink. How can I regret that?” Celesia motions angrily to the hard-drive. “That girl will call me her aunt, one day and Omega, if I am not waiting for that day, then feel free to shoot me. Time Lords are not meant to interfere. We _swear_ not to interfere, or a Renegade we make ourselves!”

“Being a Renegade is nothing to be ashamed of-”

“Yes, it is!” Celesia shouts for the first time in this body and _Rassilon,_ this body is made for shouting. But it makes her tremble, adrenaline rushing through her like a sickness. River seems startled by her voice and even the stunned guards shuffle in their sleep. “River,” she calms herself forcefully, “I understand that you didn’t grow up on Gallifrey. I really do, but please, do not make assumptions or believe anything the Doctor says. He is a good person, even if he sometimes willingly makes bad choices as every sentient being does and some might call him a Renegade for that, among other things; but the Doctor is no evil mastermind. He hasn’t taken over a planet or put greed above the lives of lesser species’. He is no true Renegade. True Renegades are true _criminals_ , River Song, murderers – not just people who leave Gallifrey’s soil for adventures.”

“So what are you, if not a Renegade?” River demands. “What is the Doctor?”

“That’s not the point of my outburst,” Celesia resists the urge to stamp her foot at her own words, for getting away with herself. Instead, she clenches her fists at her sides, ramrod straight, standing against the flow of the universe. “Maybe in the future, I have made my peace with being a law-breaking, Renegade Lady of Time. Maybe in the future, my hearts have settled some and my internal compass finds balance on this turbulent road I am taking – but right now, I am very far from calm about it. Get back inside my TARDIS so I can pilot us all off this thrice-damned planet.”

River stares at her for a long few moments, before speaking.

“God, I’d forgotten how snappy this face is.”

Celesia’s face contorts and she experiences a sensation, as if she’s been slapped. No more words escape her and she immediately rushes to her TT Capsule, terrified, skin crawling. _Snappy. I’m **overwhelmed** -_

“Are we going, now?” Abby questions, hands tucked in the pockets of her blazer as she leans up against the console. Celesia motions for her to move and she does, frowning as River follows her inside. “What’s wrong?”

“Where and when do you need to be?” Celesia questions instead of answering, throat clogged, speaking without thinking. Abby-Raine replies distractedly, calling out the space-time coordinates to the navigation system. Once they’re properly inputted, Celesia begins to fly her TARDIS from the Library, ignoring how she tries to press comfort across their bond. Celesia doesn’t want comfort, right now. She wants absolution.

_I’ve broken the Laws of Time._

They land near the end of the fifty-first century, in the apartment building for Luna University and Abby says goodbye to them all, slightly melancholy.

“You’re leaving for your expedition soon,” she says to River, shaking her head. “Time travel. It’s amazing. I can’t believe it gives Jenny a headache.”

“Shh, sweetie,” River presses a finger to her lips, glancing at Celesia. “Time to go.”

“You’ll see her again after she leaves, eventually,” Abby-Raine says encouragingly, motioning to herself and their shared mother. Abby smiles, eyes crinkling before she gives them both a hug, leaving. Celesia watches her stumble over a cracked floor tile, bringing a hand to her head abruptly before the nearby apartment door opens, revealing an old man.

“ _Dad? What happened? The last thing I remember is seeing a chair in the Library-_ ”

Realising quickly that the old man is Theta, as he hugs her tightly, pressing a kiss to her head, Celesia pilots her TARDIS into the Vortex, catching the two Gallifreyans look over in sync as they phase out. Once in the Vortex, Celesia allows herself a breather, trying – and failing – not to think about the implication of Abby’s statement. _You’re leaving for your expedition soon._

“You worked to deliberately loop back in your own timestreams. Why?” Celesia asks.

River and Abby-Raine – _or is it just Abby again?_ – spare each other a glance before Abby-Raine once more gives the navigation system space-time coordinates. However, unlike before, Celesia doesn’t pilot her TARDIS to their destination, waiting on an answer.

 _I could do this all day,_ she thinks.

“The Doctor has enemies. One of the biggest is the Time Lords, even with everything he’s done for them,” River says finally, after seemingly an age. “We’re just protecting our children from their wrath, ensuring they can’t be snatched up and taken as hostages.”

“Why involve me, then?”

“You’re the only one who can,” Abby replies, voice plaintive. “Aunty Celesia, you know _nothing._ Anything you do, _everything_ you do changes the timestream. Do you know, that in other universes, you died when the House was buried?”

“There is no other universe with a Gallifrey,” Celesia states on auto, lessons from the Academy under Borusa flashing through her mind.

“There _are_ other universes with Gallifrey – some just get wiped out because of paradoxes, time being unwritten, etcetera, etcetera.”

_Unwritten?_

Abby takes a step towards her, reaching out and grasping her hands. “Today, you hooked me as CAL, Charlotte Lux, up to the Matrix and I travelled through the beacon to it and then the Looms. I was born again and named Abigail Raine Sigma. Abby Smith, to the rest of the universe. Abby-Raine Song, to my grandparents. I grew up and guided you there – there, to the Library. The only reason you survived the burying of House Lungbarrow-”

“Enough, Abigail,” River interrupts, grasping her shoulder and pulling her back. Abby reluctantly lets go of her hands, leaving Celesia shaking slightly as River gives the navigation system a new set of space-time coordinates. “Professor, one last favour, if you would – take us home.”

Celesia takes three seconds, tallying up all the favours that Theta’s family owe him and then she turns: piloting her Type Seventy TARDIS to fifty-second century Darillium.

The sky is a bright orange-yellow, when she steps outside, the ground dusty but still growing grass. A shadow falls over them, coming from the house that faces the Singing Towers, hiding it from their view.

“Home sweet home…well, backgarden,” Abby corrects, before smiling at the vegetable patch. “The cahr-oats have finally grown! I haven’t been back here in years-”

“Mum?” comes a new voice. Celesia finds the source in an open window on the third story of the house, in the roof. A small girl with dark, tan and freckled skin and a bright shock of ginger hair leans over, egg-and-parachute in hand, dangling. “Mummy?”

“Poppy!” River calls out, smiling widely.

“Mummy!” Poppy drops her egg-and-parachute, disappearing into the house, yelling. Celesia can hear her clearly, calling for _daddy_ and _Jamie_ – but then there’s a harsh noise that sounds like the bastard child of a _rip_ and a _crack_.

In front of her, stands a woman in a ripped Time Lord engineering jumpsuit, eyes bright blue like the Vortex, blonde hair bloodstained and scraggly.

“Time to go,” she says, voice flat, before reaching out to grab the wrists of River Song and Abby, ignoring the gun in River’s hand – which she fires, to no effect. The shot hits the woman in the jugular and the bullet reflects off her skin, narrowly missing Celesia’s own neck, burrowing in the ground behind her. Then there’s another _rip-crack_ and Celesia feels that tear through to the Vortex as it closes, the Familiar disappearing.

River and Abby in tow.

The door to the house swings open, admitting Poppy and a teenage boy, floppy hair clearly inherited from Theta’s thirteenth regeneration, somehow. _When Theta regenerates, he’ll understand where he gets it from,_ Celesia thinks without a filter, in shock from the abrupt abduction.

“Aunty Professor?” Poppy stops halfway towards her, expression flickering. “Where’s Mummy and Abby?”

“Hey, Auntie Nina,” the teenage boy – _Jamie?_ – greets warily. Celesia wonders where he gets _Nina_ from, eyeing his apparel. Blazers and suit jackets seem to be a running theme in Theta’s line – and _oh_ , _Theta has a line, children, he has so many **children** again_ – because the boy wears a black velvet jacket with a matching waistcoat, buttoned over a spotted navy and black dress shirt, collar open, with blue skinny jeans and a pair of brown leather, lace-up ankleboots.

“Hello,” Celesia greets vaguely. “I- is my future self around?”

Jamie’s eyes narrow. “Yes. She won’t be back for a few weeks, but yes, she’s around. Why?”

“Tell her that it happened – another of House Dvora took River and Abigail,” Celesia orders, voice stricken. Jamie immediately recoils.

“Why aren’t _you_ doing anything about it?”

“Timestreams,” Celesia replies, staggering backwards to her TARDIS, feeling the warm heat of her as she stumbles against a garden shed. “I- I’m _here,_ I _know_ here – she can do it, I have Tristan to think about, he’s waiting for me. My future self can find them.”

“Tristan?” Jamie says his cousins name with disgust and something like unfamiliarity – like he doesn’t say the word often. A stone drops into her stomach. “What about Daisy?”

“I’ve not met this Daisy person yet – I keep hearing that name,” Celesia looks to Poppy, who starts to cry suddenly. Her hearts ache and she almost moves forwards, but Jamie pulls her behind him protectively.

“You’re not my aunt,” he says.

“N-N-No, I’m- I’m not,” Celesia agrees, before launching herself backwards into her TARDIS, slamming the doors closed and locking them, rushing to the console and flying into the Vortex. _Who is Daisy? Why did that Familiar – because it **was** a Familiar – take River and Abby?_ Celesia drops to her knees, knuckles paling as she grips the edge of the console.

_Why am I such a coward?_

Her TARDIS nudges her, sending feelings of empathy, sorrow and question. Celesia bangs her head against the console, immediately regretting it, her TARDIS sending her a soothing song that reverberates through her mind. It soothes her ragged edges, causing her to drift into a meditative state. She doesn’t know how long it lasts – it could have been a few days, or maybe it was a few minutes.

Celesia lands her TARDIS again, in a nearby galaxy, in another time period. She focuses on the memory of her son, of Tristan with blonde locks that curl behind his ears and dark brown eyes. _I wonder what colour eyes I have,_ she thinks, slightly delirious. _I didn’t even think to look._

Her console makes a noise. Celesia stands, watching the screen flicker. _A transmission._ “Let’s see, then,” she leans closer, peering at the readings. The video has an odd electrical component in its transmission state that her TARDIS flags as dangerous to those with Human or Humanlike brainwaves. “Print off a verbal transcript, please.” Celesia would rather read through anything her TARDIS can parse from it, before watching.

Out of a thin slit in the console, a scroll begins to print out, writing in swirling dark purple ink, reminding Celesia once again that she needs to change her desktop. Picking up the end, she begins to read the 38th Century English, appropriately translated by her TARDIS.

_You must not watch this. I’m warning you. You can never unsee it. But if you do watch. Gagan Rassmussen. I’m Gagan Rassmussen. This is Le Verrier lab in orbit around Neptune. I’ve put things together into some kind of order so that you can- er, understand, so that you can have some idea. There are bits missing. Sorry about that. I don’t fully understand what’s been going on here, but- er, this is what happened…_

The transcript details a horror story.

“Dear Omega,” Celesia whispers when she’s done. The scroll is a pile on the floor and she lets the end in her hand drop to join it, before abruptly crouching down to take it again, rolling it up quickly. “I’m never going to listen to whatever that _Sandman_ song is, never ever if I can help it.”

_I have to stop the transmission before it reaches anyone._

Celesia freezes, eyes widening as she realises what Abby said was true.

 _I do know nothing. What I don’t know changes the timeline. So, to get this transmission out, but only to **me** …_ A shudder runs through her.

“I’m going to have to go to the _Le Verrier_ to stop the transmission reaching anyone but myself, oh _Rassilon_ , help me, please.”

Piloting her TARDIS, barely glancing at the screen long enough to get the transmission number, Celesia inwardly debates over the merits of being _good_ and _kind_. Her cousin, no doubt, has some silly speech locked away about doing what’s right and Celesia both wants to hear it – to be _validated_ in her illegal actions – and never listen to a word he says, ever again. He was right, in the transcript at least.

_That adventure **was** too much like a story. The Dust-Rassmussen admitted it was meant to be one, in the end._

Celesia hesitates against landing her TARDIS inside the _Le Verrier_ , not sure when to show herself. Eventually, she decides to park her TT Capsule some sparse minutes before her cousin escapes with this ‘Clara’ he’s picked up.

“I can set up a barrier, preventing Rassmussen from sending out the video. Just until the base is destroyed and it stops transmitting,” she murmurs to herself, grimacing slightly upon realising she’s talking to herself again. “Programming your shields to expand once Theta is gone shouldn’t be too hard, should it, dear?”

Her TARDIS hums in reply, before turning on her screen to the outside of the disguise, showing what looks like a storage room, or maybe some sort of rescue ship. Celesia begins to fiddle with her Type Seventy’s shielding, glancing up every so often at the screen, waiting to see Theta and his companion. A small symbol in the corner tells her the mute is on. It’s perhaps somewhat strange, but part of her wants to see this little Human companion, who is clearly bright and a personality and a half, to rebel against Theta and question him without recourse.

“He did always pick clever ones,” Celesia takes a moment to pat her TARDIS console, briefly recalling the Confessional Dial in the workshop at the reminder of Time Lords. “Do you mind moving your previous owner’s Dial to the Zero Room, dear?” Her TARDIS replies positively and Celesia is thankful she does, because really, she doesn’t want to have to deal with someone suddenly trying to claim her TARDIS without prior warning. Celesia knows what that’ll do to their bond – she’ll be shunted to secondary pilot, if she’s lucky. Pre-existing bonds between TARDISes and Time Lords are not bonds to be meddled with, much like the ones between parent and child.

On the screen, people suddenly appear and Celesia recognises Theta’s old, greying face from before, from when he greeted the newly un-Arch’ed Abby. Quickly, she looks away, not sparing any attention to the people around him for the moment – she’s not finished changing the programming. But that quick look rankles her for some reason, a part of her brain lighting up in recognition and bewilderment.

Celesia looks up and stifles a yell of surprise.

The screen unmutes.

“ _Doctor, quickly!_ ” the body-duplicate of Closaranoktorwin exclaims, before Theta does… _something_. Celesia isn’t paying attention, watching Closa- _Clara_ , she realises with a horrible start, because she’s dressed in twenty-first century clothes where the only other person in the room is dressed for combat.

“ _What did you just do?_ ”

“ _Self-destructed the grav-shields._ ”

“ _What?_ ”

Something happens, the shift of gravity able to be seen through how they shift, tilting to the side. The other woman – _Nagata_ – and Clara both cry out, while Theta exclaims that it’s working. Celesia’s eyes are pinned on Clara as she opens Theta’s blue box of a TARDIS, Theta himself going on about Neptune’s gravity and how nothing makes sense, before they run into the time machine and dematerialise. Celesia is left empty, starving for another look at her beloved’s doppelganger.

“Rewind it!” she demands, before turning to manual, using a dial to turn it back and then play it again, staring at Closa’s face. “Clara,” she breathes her name, searching her figure – it’s the _same_ – and her clothes – _so unfamiliar_ – for the familiar shape of a pocket-watch. But she’s wearing the bare minimum. A skirt with no pockets, a long-sleeved shirt with a single necklace that _doesn’t_ have a watch-

“Where is it?” Celesia demands, hands reaching over to grab the upper edge of the screen. “Where is her watch?” Her TARDIS croons in her mind then, before prodding her brain to remember the sand-and-dust creatures. Celesia growls angrily, but gets back to increasing the shields, hyper-aware of her time limit. Rassmussen is already rushing in towards a computer.

She sets up the shield, stabilising her TARDIS outside of the ship and capsule, watching from a distance as Neptune sucks the ship into its gravity. She reaches out through the bubble for the transmission, copying and sending it along to the previous coordinates of her TARDIS, placing a firewall around it to alert her if anyone tries to intercept it. Once she’s done, Celesia grasps the edge of her console, thoughts running a mile a minute.

Simultaneously, she thinks of her Closa and of Theta.

Closa was hers. They fought with each other and Celesia _definitely_ died for her once. Sod the rest of the pilots – _no, never sod them, they were the best comrades I could have ever have been given_. Celesia remembers what she looked like in that regeneration, all brown hair and young, sparkling eyes. Cheeky. Clever.

Much like Theta’s companion.

However, it isn’t this _Clara_ Celesia thinks of in that other part of her mind. No. She thinks of Theta. His thirteenth regeneration has the most convoluted history Celesia has ever encountered. His children – Jenny, Jamie, Poppy and Abby – live on a foreign planet with the majority of them having River Song for a mother – River Song, whose younger self has just regenerated in front of him from Mels Zucker into _Melody Williams | River Song_. It’s like he’s _asking_ for time to collapse.

“I shouldn’t have left Tristan with him,” Celesia recoils from the love she has for her cousin, feeling sick for ever bonding them in the first place. _Rassilon, I thought it would be a **good** thing!_ Her stomach rebels violently, but all she can do is begin piloting her TARDIS home, to where her son sits with a Renegade, a _true Renegade._

Who knows what he has planned for her son, this young? What seeds of- of _rebellion_ will he plant in her sons mind? What kind of criminal behaviour has her son already picked up?

“Jamie didn’t know Tristan’s name,” Celesia lands in her house driveway, knees almost buckling. “Theta’s own _son_ didn’t know- his own little family and his son doesn’t know the names of the dead of Lungbarrow.”

Celesia thinks of her own words to Theta’s thirteenth regeneration. _She is to be of her own House, then. Rory and Amy Williams’._ How naïve she is, how _bloody naïve is Celesia Larn?_ River Song, or rather, Melody Williams, was there when she said it – and all that _shit_ about creating history by not knowing any, from a girl who called her _aunt_ instead of _cousin_. What kind of person calls their cousin _aunt_? One who doesn’t know their family tree, that’s who. Celesia feels like crying and this body doesn’t even seem _fit_ for crying in.

_He took Closa, too. He wrapped my Closa up in his history and- and she’s a Time Lady, she **has** to be. He’s taken her watch and hidden it. I have to help her, get her back…return her to her own time-stream._

Closa dies on Gallifrey, after forcing Celesia to leave her behind.

“It happened, it’s fixed,” Celesia thinks, ignoring how she hadn’t seen her die. Not even Theta would travel into… _but he would. He **would** travel into the Time War. He’s a collector. He collects Humans all the time-_ “No,” she stops herself from thinking more on that path, “ _no._ His family needs me, is using me for their own ends. Perhaps she’s just a consolation prize – a Human who looks like my Closa, but isn’t.”

Her TARDIS tries and fails to soothe Celesia as she exits her, determined to take Tristan and never return to the house they’d made their home for the last eighty years.

Inside, the Williams’, Tristan and Theta still sip their tea. Celesia’s mug is still warm. Upon her arrival, the group look up, expressions shifting. Theta leans forwards in his chair, setting down his tea as Celesia trembles.

“Professor? What’s the matter?”

“Tristan, come with me, now,” Celesia orders, tight-lipped. Tristan frowns.

“Why?”

“I’ll explain later. Please, just…come with me, right now.” Celesia wishes then that she’d regenerated like last time – into a warrior, into someone who wouldn’t hesitate in shooting an enemy. _A teacher,_ she thinks guiltily, _I just wanted to be a teacher again._

But obviously, that isn’t the kind of person she truly needed to be.

“Professor, is there something wrong?” Rory asks and Celesia briefly wonders at his part in this all. Rory and Amy, Theta’s friends and family by marriage. He looks at her with genuine worry. “Professor?”

“…I don’t trust my cousin right now,” she admits quietly, refusing to look at him. Tristan immediately gets up, coming to her side as Theta makes a noise of confused hurt.

“Why?”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Celesia snaps, suddenly glaring at him. “I don’t want to speak to you.”

His expression twists, before he seems to shut down. “You found out about Gallifrey, then.”

“Gallifrey? What happened to Gallifrey?” Celesia questions in confusion, eyes narrowing. Theta frowns slightly, glancing at Amy, before clearing his throat.

“Professor, I used the Moment.”

“No,” she immediately disagrees. “If you’d used the Moment, you wouldn’t be here. The Moment erases events from time, from the root and erasing the Time War would erase the Time Lords.”

“But I _know_ I used the Moment-” Theta stands, arguing, but Celesia cuts him off.

“I’ve _talked_ to the Moment. The Interface promised that she wouldn’t ever be used during the Time War. She _swore_ to me she wouldn’t do that.”

“Why would she do that?” Theta questions, blinking confusedly and looking so young, for all his supposed years. _How old is he?_ Celesia asks herself. _How old is my cousin, who burns through regenerations?_ “And ‘she’? The Moment is a death machine, not alive-”

“The Moment is as alive as any TARDIS, as I should know. I helped build her, so I definitely should.” Celesia feels a small hand creep into hers and she looks to Tristan, who steadfastly chews on the sleeve of his woolly-pulley. The sensation of awe knocks out the breath from her lungs, even as the thought of how she knows Closa would react to this flashes in front of her eyes. Closa would clap and put her hands over her mouth, trying to hide – and then not bothering to hide – her wide smile. _She’d be proud of him, so proud._

_She’s dead._

Forcing herself not to flinch, instead squeezing Tristan’s hand so very, very lightly, Celesia glances at Theta.

“One of your former ‘companions’ was a close friend of mine. A Time Lord in hiding. You either didn’t know, or you did. She’s dead now, but recently I saw footage of you both. It was…upsetting. I know how she ends and I- I don’t know how she gets from her life with you to- to dead on a mountain pass.” Celesia shudders at the thought, the image that goes through her mind horrifying and probably far more gruesome than Closa’s true end. “Everywhere you go, Doctor, you bend time and break the rules.”

 _I despise you for it,_ she wants to say, but Celesia is intimately aware of her son beside her, holding her hand voluntarily for the first time in his life. She looks away from her cousin, locking eyes with Rory Williams. He’s tense, waiting for something to happen.

“I’m sorry,” she says to him, the words new and foreign on her tongue. She doesn’t like saying them. _This body doesn’t do apologies,_ she thinks with a grimace, before turning, pulling Tristan along behind her.

 _What’s going on?_ He asks her along their bond.

 _We’re leaving,_ she replies, pausing by the front door to take his spare coats and shoes, which he’d left behind the last time they’d packed up their belongings. Tristan grabs his ‘hidden’ anorak, which Celesia knows not to touch unless she wants to buy him a new one, as Theta comes barrelling out of the kitchen.

“Professor- are you leaving?” his eyes flicker between the coats and shoes. “Why are you…is it me? Because- because of your friend? What was her name? Tell me, I can tell you what happened to them, if I can-”

“This is exactly why we are leaving,” Celesia interrupts, voice dripping with malice and hate. Tristan’s hand leaves hers abruptly, their bond growing distant as he blocks her heightened emotions from reaching him. “Telling me what happened when I am _perfectly_ aware that the Time War has been over for you for a long time is not only illegal, but an _extremely_ bad idea. No wonder the Council kept trying to get you executed before the War began!”

The Williams’ join them at that point, following along behind Theta like puppies. Celesia has mixed feelings about Tristan’s father, most of them revolving around this loyalty to her cousin – why did she ever think it a good idea to introduce Tristan to him? And that bond she’d already implemented between Theta and Tristan, _Omega!_

“What’s this all about, anyway?” Amy questions, eyebrows knitting together. “Is this sort of like the stuff with River? And Melody? Spoilers?”

“The situation is similar but at the same time, completely different. I am displaced,” Celesia explains patiently. “I should never have left the Time War. Every action I take, every conversation I have, every child I produce – it affects the universe. Time Lords are sworn never to engage, interfere or manipulate events. The Doctor breaks those vows regularly and in extravagant fashion, as Renegades do. I have broken them too, hypocrite that I am, but I, at least, attempt to minimise my involvement. This means I don’t create paradoxes or use time travel for my own or my family’s ends – or I shouldn’t.”

“So you have, already?” Amy questions.

Celesia glances at Theta. “Miss Evangelista. You know who she is, yes?”

“I do,” Theta says, beleaguered with grief. Celesia’s stomach flips. _No._

“Is she dead?”

“Yes.”

Celesia shuts her eyes, murmuring a prayer before breathing in deeply and looking at her cousin, who has already had to lose his entire family and- and now has obviously lost another one. He’s in his thirteenth regeneration – he most likely knows her future, all her involvement in saving Miss Evangelista from the Vashta Nerada. _Abby is dead,_ is what he really means. Celesia wonders about Poppy, Jamie and Jenny, if they were all dead too – if he’d ever reunited with Jenny at all.

 _This is why you should never ask questions,_ she thinks to Tristan, before leading him out of the front door, coats, boots and anoraks in hand, to her TARDIS.


End file.
